Prison Conversations
by ardy1
Summary: A prison in the Fire Nation occupied territory of the Earth Kingdom. Two unlikely boys, enemies, with death sentences. Nothing to do but talk together. And perhaps, together, find a way to escape. Friendship, rated for language and adult themes. Complete
1. Chapter 1

A/N This was started as a response to a challenge: "Ye Olde Cliche". There's no bigger cliché than the whole Zuko kidnaps Katara for bait. Well, what would Sokka have to say to that, anyway?

_Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…_

* * *

Chapter 1

The wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly, even in the Fire Nation. In the territories, those wheels barely move at all. Perhaps because in the territories, there is even less incentive to push forward the demands of "progress". This is just one of the many lessons history teaches that civilization ignores.

So it was that two condemned prisoners found themselves with days, perhaps months, to 'kill' while they awaited the orders for their execution. The surety of their fate was not in question; it was merely a matter of _when_. For the one, the waiting was torment. He sought _salvation_ in the executioner's block, an end to a short life of striving, disappointment, and uncertainty. For the other, the waiting was merely the culmination of a cosmic _joke _at his expense. That their cells shared an adjoining wall was, on the one hand, coincidental; on the other, it was the inevitable end to the strange series of events bringing two young men from _very_ different backgrounds together.

* * *

"I don't know, I guess I'd take strings over flute or horn" Sokka said, as he answered his own question yet again. The Fire Prince on the other side of the bars occasionally acknowledged him, but rarely allowed himself to respond to Sokka's continued attempts to engage him in conversation. Not that Sokka cared. He took perverse pleasure in their parallel situations, and enjoyed goading the prince with his nonchalant assumption of commonality, and therefore social equality, in awaiting the headsman's ax. "I used to love the horns, or even better, the drums. So stirring, you know. But the last year or so, I've come to love the voice of the strings"

"You _are_ an ass." There was no bitterness left in Zuko's words. They had been there long enough that he had resigned himself to the inanities that issued from the neighboring cell. Still, he couldn't wholly ignore either Sokka's presence or his efforts to engage him.

"Really, so you prefer the horns?" Sokka smiled to himself, deliberately misunderstanding Zuko. "Ah well, but I seem to recall someone said you actually played the suungi horn. I prefer a reed instrument to the suungi horn myself – so much more plaintive sound, I think."

And _yes,_ tiny plumes of smoke feathered above the prince's fingertips, bringing sweet satisfaction to Sokka's soul.

Zuko couldn't stand it anymore. "Where are they? Your sister, the Avatar? By now they_ must_ know you are doomed. Why don't they come to rescue you?" His own hopeless situation pushed back in the recesses of his mind as he pondered the mystery of his neighbor's predicament. It simply didn't mesh with what he thought he had learned of them.

Sokka stretched himself out along the length of his cell, thankful yet again for his unfettered status as a result of not being a bender. "I've _no i_dea what you are talking about."

"You are_ so_ full of shit! How stupid do you think I am?" The words echoed in his brain. He knew he had uttered them before, to no better purpose.

Sokka's eyes rolled. "Do you really need to ask" He chortled. He had no desire to die so young. But if he had to go, he could think of worse ways – to be allowed to make the last days of the Fire Prince a living hell was sweet penance indeed. Zuko rewarded him with a breathy blast to the charred ceiling of his cell.

Still, Sokka knew their time was running out. In truth, he was no more cruel than any normal boy. With that, he gave the prince an honest answer.

* * *

"_You_ are the ass, Zuko," he said resolutely, "You and your sister, and all the Fire Nation, to think that we couldn't anticipate an attempt to use us against Aang, and _not_ prepare for it."

"Hah! Some preparation — you were caught easily enough," Zuko spat out bitterly. He wondered how he himself had missed such an obvious solution to the question of trapping the avatar.

"Right. It _was_ bound to happen, sooner or later." Sokka met Zuko's glare stolidly. "So. Given that, do you _really_ think we would allow Aang to rescue either of us?"

"Could either of you have _stopped_ him? I think not," This time the bitterness of Zuko's answer burned his own lips.

Sokka laughed quietly. "I admit, we _did_ wonder about that a bit, initially. But don't kid yourselves. He's twelve going on a _hundred-thirteen._ You killed off his people, you threaten, no! You're _trying_ to enslave the rest of the world. Aang hates it, but he _knows_ what he has to do." He closed his eyes, picturing cold blue glaciers instead of sweating metal walls and bars. "And so do we."

* * *

Zuko looked at the boy across the bars. An ignorant peasant. He heard Sokka hum to himself some melody he attributed to the water tribe. He _hated_ Sokka even more than he hated the avatar, hated them both for what they made him see in himself. Somewhere along the line he had lost his certainty, even as he had lost everything else. Now he found himself envying the pathetic water tribesman he had so easily dismissed on their first encounter. This made no sense. They were both going to _die_.

"I never did like the sound of the suungi horn — and I hated playing the damn thing! If you must know, I like the flute."


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: So I was convinced to see if I could find a "Get out of Jail" card for these boys by "StoryBender" over at LJ. Hmm. We shall see what we shall see.

_Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…_

* * *

Chapter 2

"I don't know whether to be impressed or disgusted," Zuko said, half under his breath. "How can one skinny guy eat so _much_ revolting food at one time?" He didn't honestly expect an answer. Nor, for that matter, could he imagine one.

His neighbor shrugged, mouth too full to comment at first. "'m jus'mft simple growin' boy."

The prince had a point; prison food made Sokka and his friends' efforts to make appealing meals out of their scroungings look downright tasty. Sokka managed to chew the unidentifiable mess to a swallowable consistency. "My apologies, your highness. Hate to ruin your appetite for your own scrumptious fare." He shrugged again. "In _my_ experience, the next meal may be a long time in coming. No point in being _too_ choosy."

Perhaps at some point, Sokka had imagined but did _not_ envy, a more exacting taste.

"Just _watching_ you eat takes away any appetite I might have had. And the stench!"

"Oh, it's bad all right. I think I've eaten dirt that tasted better. No, I _know_ I've eaten dirt that tasted better."

"You would."

"Yep. Good times, good times..."

* * *

Zuko eyed the appalling portion on the plate before him, waiting for the prison wench to return to feed him, since his own hands were shackled to the wall.

His gut gnawed at the reality of its own emptiness. He really thought he had learned to accept whatever was available; thought more than a month of privation and the near starvation of charity's offerings and his own hunting efforts had taught his stomach humility, if nothing else.

Apparently, he had been wrong.

"Doesn't matter anyway," He muttered. "Why give them the satisfaction of eating slop like an animal when they're going to kill us like animals anyway?"

"Like _I'm_ gonna make killing me _easy _for them?"

At first, the prince had thought he might be imagining the voice that followed so closely his own thoughts…

"Nope, they're gonna have to drag me kicking and screaming, and if I'm lucky, I'll take one or two _with _me," Sokka grimaced as he considered a greenish pile that still remained on his plate. "Uh, is it a normal practice to _poison_ prisoners scheduled for execution?"

Zuko laughed. Somehow he didn't really believe Sokka was serious in his question at this late date, but he appreciated the Water Tribe boy's effort. "Don't worry, Sokka, _you_? They _won't _poison you – why bother? Your _only_ value is as bait for the Avatar. Now me, on the other hand…"

"Oh, how paranoid! And here I thought _your_ appetite was all about _presentation_! Are you trying to tell me, now, it's just _politics_? But say, since you've decided to try to kill yourself through starvation, rather than wait for execution, do you mind if I get a poll going as to the exact date? I might as well try to make a little money on it. Oh, and can I have your dinner?"

Now Zuko glared. He couldn't help wondering just how seriously to take Sokka after all.

But he certainly _wouldn't_ let him eat his dinner, or his breakfast for that matter. And Zuko resolved to match the Water Tribe boy, mouthful for mouthful, even it if killed him!

* * *

Anger was good, _much _better than self-pity. Sokka was a practiced hand at inciting anger.

He concentrated on Zuko's scar, and swallowed the last amorphous bite on his tray. By imagining the lines traced on the other boy's skull as an unknown topography, he had managed to consider his neighbor's visage wholly without flinching. This was, of course, a good thing – you couldn't let the enemy define the stage. Even if it was a prison stage.

Mindgames were amazingly helpful in even the most bizarre context.


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: Yea! Positive reviews! Finding a way to get them out of prison may take a while. While I figure that out, they continue to talk. It's not like they can really avoid one another…_

_Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…_

* * *

Chapter 3

"You are one _sick_ bastard," This time Zuko was determined to close his mind to Sokka's comments.

"What, ya _think_? I assure, you my parents' union was legally sanctioned." Sokka's response was mild, as always. "Or rather, I'm sure it was by the time my sister came along." He winked at Zuko.

"You'd slander your own mother?"

"You seem to forget, you slandered _both_ my parents first. Honor and inclination require that I _gut_ you, slowly and painfully. While I figure out _how_ I'm going to manage that, I thought I might as well be civil."

"Oh."

Zuko thought about it. "_You _have an evil mouth, Sokka. How come your water-bending sister hasn't drowned you already?"

"She's tried, believe me." Another wink. "Bitching _at_ me or _about_ me keeps her from obsessing over Aang. She's a chronic worry-wart." He shrugged. "So this way _he_ gets a break and _she's_ busy. Everyone wins."

"Right. _You_ get to be a jerk and tell yourself you're being a _hero_ at the same time."

"Something like that." Sokka stood up, stretched, and assumed a relaxed position leaning against the bars that separated them. "Stop trying to change the subject."

Zuko sighed. "It's a stupid subject. You have no idea what you're talking about."

"Of course I do. While it's _not_ my problem and it's definitely _beyond_ my comprehension, she thinks you're a babe." Sokka chuckled. "Uh, where I come from, that means she _wants_ you. Like, to have your children and all sorts of other impossibilities given the fact that they are going to cut your head off any day now."

They had been discussing the prison wench, who for the last week had brought them the thoroughly disgusting gruel that kept them alive. Sokka ate whatever was offered, doggedly if not enthusiastically, while Zuko choked down a fraction purely on willpower and keeping himself alive (determined not to let the water-tribe boy best him in this or anything else).

* * *

"Discussing" may have been an overstatement, as Zuko visibly flinched at Sokka's last comment. Silence reigned, for the first time in days.

An odd alliance had finally formed between the two teenagers. Despite their disparate backgrounds and beliefs, this alliance was the inevitable outcome of a decision to doom, for reasons purely of expediency, a pair of otherwise average adolescents. It could be argued that fate had other plans for these two, and thus entrusted their execution date to the resolution of an intricate trail of paper.

Once a day, they clubbed Zuko, unshackled him, and led him out to a heavily guarded section of the prison for "exercise" and "bodily necessities". Upon his return to his cell, Sokka would query him, curious as much as anything else as to Zuko's ability to absorb the daily punishment. It was this that had started their conversations. Zuko couldn't remember when, or to what question, he had first responded to the Water Tribe boy. Certainly not the first day, but also probably not the first day he remembered doing so. In reality, there was some question as to how reliable Zuko's memory or perception even was these days.

Perhaps the girl at issue would have been thrilled to have known she was the subject of any discussion at all. From any perspective, she was ill-favored and, frankly, seemed something of a dullard. For her, the presence of the mysterious Fire Nation boy in this part of the prison housing enemies of the state was romance incarnate. He was hardly older than herself, a polished god of virility with a lurid scar that spoke of dangerous passions. His posture was erect, his features clear and refined, despite the disfiguring scar. No one said who he was, but his bearing alone indicated that he must have been someone very important indeed. She deemed it _appropriate_ that he ignore her, and when she took the task of spoon-feeding the shackled fire-bender she thanked the spirits that he never met her gaze or acknowledged her presence as other than a necessity in this inconvenient situation.

Then there was the blue-eyed youth in the next cell. _His_ story was common knowledge, and it _too_ spoke of romance. Had she been asked, she would probably have admitted her admiration for both young men. In her dreams, the faces of the two prisoners became interchangable. But she was never asked. And never would be, even given later events.

"You know, there _might_ be a way out for you there," Sokka said thoughtfully, surprising himself. When he had first arrived at the prison, he had seen the prince in the cell next to him as part of some sort of conspiracy, the shackled wrists, scruffy shorn hair and ill-fitting clothes notwithstanding. In time, as he witnessed the prince's various humiliations and apparent inability to choreograph appropriate responses, Sokka began to accept that this was no well-laid trap on Zuko's part, and that the fire prince may in fact be in as dire straits as he himself.

The thought gave him immense pleasure, at first. Then, he began to wonder.

Hardly the simple soul he professed, Sokka was frequently annoyed at his _inability_ to see things – or people – in a straight-forward manner. Inevitably, he started looking for the _angles_, and inevitably his nice neat world would get twisted around and cluttered with extraneous considerations. For example, he knew Zuko was bad news from _personal _experience. Thus, a world without Zuko would be a better world indeed. Yes? Well, but wasn't Zuko something of a _check_ on the even more psychotic members of his family? And did general cussedness warrant a death sentence? If so, then perhaps he himself was appropriately sentenced after all.

So Sokka probed his neighbor with various verbal barbs, some obvious and others more subtle. He had no great appreciation for Zuko's intellect, and this had hardly altered over time. However, he _did _begin to get a sense of the driving passion behind his enemy's ambition, and slowly but surely recognized that whatever evils could be attributed to the Fire Nation had little basis in Zuko's soul.

Oh, there was _no_ question that Zuko was arrogant and self-absorbed, his values warped by an apparent inability to recognize the fallacy of his nation's racial superiority. But he _wasn't_ evil, and he wasn't _stupid._ And so, his _own_ aspirations regarding Zuko began a metomorphosis.

Sokka had accepted that he was likely to die in this venture, but that hardly meant he had given up. Having determined in his own mind that Zuko was not deserving of death either – damn him, anyway! – Sokka had started including him in his consideration of escape plans. Of course, he had yet to discuss the options with Zuko himself.

* * *

_A/N: I recently received a review - years after this was completed - from someone who at first seemed to be positively impressed with my proper grammar, etc. And then they advised me that my vocabulary was too advanced - and gave me a list of words they didn't understand. For this story, this was a first. I will admit that I first started learning vocabulary fromt he surrounding context - in other words, I learned from reading. I still think this is the best way to learn, and so it is how I write. No apologies. So be prepared to get out a dictionary!_


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Just a warning - This is one of those stories where nothing much really happens. The guys don't like it either, and they try to take matters into their own hands.

Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…

Chapter 4

"You mean you've never flirted at all? Shit! What a loser!" It was Sokka's turn to be disgusted.

"Why should I flirt, damn it? I'm a prince!" Zuko growled at Sokka's suggestion that he attempt to befriend the prison wench.

"Yeah, until you were fuckin' exiled, boyo! At fourteen! Bet the Fire Nation girls just threw themselves at you after that! 'Ooh, here comes Prince Zuko with the sexy scar!' But no, Fire Nation girls thought you were dirt, didn't they? Oops, fat lotta good being a prince did you then, huh?" Sokka rolled his eyes, deliberately cruel in confronting the boy in the neighboring cell with harsh truths that no one but his enemies mentioned in other than whispers.

"You are a stupid shit. Why should I even bother?" He shook his head, pondering his lack of luck in savvy companions. First Aang, now Zuko! At least Aang would catch on fairly quickly – you didn't have to pound things into his head. And yeah, Katara was pretty sharp, for a girl. But Zuko! He could be so damned thick! Well, at least he owed nothing to any innocence Zuko may have held; there was no need to protect him. In fact, he had to admit he took perverse pleasure in each poke of truth he took at Zuko's carefully constructed world view, watching it crumble before him. That he admired his opponent's stubborn refusal to flinch under assault only hardened his resolve to drag the prince, ever protesting, into his own perception of truth. At this point Sokka didn't know which he'd rather see; Zuko in despair over recognition of his own father's evil or denial of the same. Without knowing it, Sokka turned a corner in his own perception of the Fire Nation.

"Yeah, well. Fuck you." Zuko turned away, wishing he could pound the other boy into the rough stone of the prison floor. He had no desire to attack him with flame – he wanted to best Sokka on equal terms! But he wondered if he even had the strength anymore. He had forced himself to eat the slop that was presented to him after Sokka challenged him about giving up, and tried to use the brief periods in which he was free to stretch his muscles, work them and keep his reflexes sharp, but he knew his body was no longer the smooth machine he had created with his uncle's help. He knew his response to Sokka's taunt was inadequate and puerile. He was afraid to admit, even to himself, that he didn't want Sokka to give up on him.

"Get over yourself, asshole. Okay, so in the Fire Nation, you're less than dirt. But think about it, man! To the girls in the rest of the world, you got the potential to be a fucking hero. Hey, the scar'll probably be an asset." Sokka wasn't sure he wanted to share these observations with Zuko. He was younger than the other boy, and he knew he wasn't as strong, fast, or as talented a warrior as Zuko, and probably never would be. Sokka still struggled with his body's sudden growth spurts – his pants were too short again, and his shoulders pushed against the seams of his shirt. Where Zuko was taut he was gangly, and his muscles still didn't always obey him the way he wanted them to.

But hey! He'd been in love, with a princess no less, and she had loved him in return, so he knew he had no real complaints. And yes, he hadn't been exactly idle since they left the Northern Water Tribe. He gave himself a mental shake. Sokka thought he had gotten a good handle on the workings of the female mind. Well, as good as a guy was likely to ever get!

"But forget about the other girls for now. What matters is our little Ling-Ling, who for some reason thinks you're her brand of Paradise. Why, I can't imagine, but she does. And she, my fire-bending friend, is your ticket out of here. That is, if you can get off your high-horse and give her the respect her position as your angel of mercy deserves."

"It doesn't seem very honest" Zuko was suddenly caught up in a fit of shyness and conscience, both strangers to his usual state of being.

Sokka slapped his forehead with his palm. "And killing you for not meeting Dad's expections is perfectly honest." He drew a deep breath. "This is not the time to be worrying about your honor, Zuko, trust me. Ling-Ling certainly won't thank you for it!"

"Would you just shut up about that?" Zuko regretted again the confidences he had shared with Sokka during their imprisonment. "All right, all right. I'll be nice. But I really don't think it's going to do any good. She's an idiot, afraid of her own shadow. She'll never have the nerve to steal the keys for us. If you're such a stud, I don't see why you can't do it"

Sokka counted to five before attempting to speak. "Several reasons. And I will go over them yet again. If you weren't here, I would probably try. But you are and she prefers you. That's one. She's already used to being close to you, so you should be able to bring her around faster than I could. She scurries away from my cell right after shoving the tray in. I do think time is something we need to consider. That's two. All the cells open with the same key, but we'll also need the key to your shackles. It would be blatantly obvious we're working together if I asked her to steal _that_ key for me as well. I thought we agreed that not only are we better off if they don't figure that out but so is poor Ling-Ling. That's three. Do I really need to come up with more?"

"So. The real reason you're starring me in this grand escape plan of yours is because you need me. She wouldn't look twice at Water Tribe scum."

"Yep. I need you. And don't mess this up by leaving me behind. Shall I explain those reasons to you as well?"

Zuko was tempted to say yes. But he knew Sokka would come up with perfectly plausible reasons to explain why the Fire Nation prince should help the obnoxious peasant escape as well, and he honestly didn't want any more reason than what his gut told him. Especially since, among other things, his gut told him that Sokka actually didn't need him.

"Never mind."

"Do you think you even know how to be nice to a girl?"

An image of the other water tribe peasant came to Zuko's mind, when he had tied her to a tree and tried to coax her into giving up the whereabouts of the avatar. Well, he hadn't exactly been nice then. And there was no need to remind Sokka of that particular incident. "I think so. As you said, it shouldn't be too difficult."


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: In this chapter we get a plot twist. If you can call what is happening here a plot.

Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…

Ling-Ling was so compliant to Zuko's sudden warmth towards her that Sokka wondered if he should be suspicious. He was careful to keep his observations of their interactions surreptitious, feigning sleep or preoccupation with his own meals.

He and Zuko had maintained a surly silence whenever others were present since they had first been imprisoned together, with the exception of an occasional insult tossed between cells. Without the need to discuss it, they continued this charade even after their private interactions had attained civility. In the unspoken solidarity of prisoners everywhere, any secret from their jailors was a good secret.

Sokka had also been surprised at how accomplished a flirt Zuko could be. After only two brief conversations with the girl, his voice took on a purring caress that made Sokka's ears burn. Ling-Ling no longer rushed through her serving of the prince, and her eyes no longer remained down-cast. With the fourth conversation there was a noticeable difference in the quality of the food on Zuko's plate at meal-times. On the fourth day, while Zuko was out for his exercise period, Ling-Ling came in with a broom and clean linen for Zuko's sleeping mat. Sokka was hardly fastidious in his own habits, but he would have been happy to dispense with the fleas that infested his cell.

He was impressed. Apparently the prince had absorbed some lessons in diplomacy after all. Imagine that.

"I suggest you get her to back off on improving your comfort."

"Why? Jealous?"

"Only somewhat. But that's beside the point." Sokka scratched his neck, mindful of the prince's inability to scratch at any itch he might have. "You're not supposed to be pampered. When we're gone any sign of favoritism will point directly to her."

"Damn you… They'll figure it out anyway. She'll be blamed and there's nothing we can do about it."

"So good of you to make it worth her while." Sokka was still wracking his brain for a way around this dilemma, so perhaps there was unwonted sourness in his comment.

"I'm doing what you told me to do." Zuko pointed out.

"Right. Sorry. Guess I'm feeling guilty."

"How do you think I feel?"

Silence while Sokka pondered the unlooked-for question.

"How bad do you think it will be? I mean, what will they do to her?" Zuko surprised himself. The prison wench was little more than a slave, and he didn't recall worrying much about others before.

"I don't know. You're Fire Nation, not me. What's the price for betrayal, or just plain stupidity?"

More silence.

"I should warn her. Give her a chance to say no."

"Will she? I mean, the whole point is to seduce her into helping us - I mean you."

"Yeah. Good point."

And yet more silence. Wheels of agony ground away at their souls in an uneasy tandem.

"You're the mastermind. Can't you think of another way?"

"I've been trying, damn it! Okay, hotshot. What do the royal brains have to say?"

"I got nothing."

"Figures."

"Okay, look. You're prepared to give up your life for the avatar. So, what if she's prepared to maybe give up her life for me. It's her choice, right?"

"Are you nuts? We are manipulating her into helping us! That is not a choice!"

"Good leadership is all about making hard choices for other people. I'm practicing good leadership."

"Not when it means hurting others to benefit yourself."

"But in the long run my life is more important than hers."

"How do you know that? What if she is destined to be the great-grandmother of the next fire-bender avatar?"

"Huh! Using that logic, you could be the father of the next water-bender avatar, so your life could still be more important."

"Ew," the thought gave Sokka pause for a second. "It's still wrong."

"It was your damned idea!"

"I know! I know." Sokka buried his head in his hands. And then, that annoying brain of his began to consider yet another angle. Which, on occasion, made it not annoying at all.

"I suppose," he said slowly, turning over the possibilities, considering the implications. "We could always ask her opinion."

"What are you talking about? 'Hey, Ling-Ling Honey, if I were to escape because you helped me, do you think it would be a problem for you?' The food has poisoned your brain after all. We're gonna die."

"Shut up a minute. I'm thinking!" Sometimes a little buzz of certainty would course through his gut when Sokka was on to something. Of course, sometimes it was indistinquishable from excitement or fear, so he was wary of trusting it. The buzz was there now. Sokka grinned.

"Zuko, were you honestly surprised at Ling-Ling's response to you?"

"Well, uh," the older boy looked a little uncomfortable. "Like you said, she's kinda liked me for a while."

"Uh-huh. I'm a ninny." Little signs clicked into place, and a satisfactorily complete picture began to emerge. "And you knew this because..?"

"Well, I didn't really need you to point it out. It just wasn't appropriate to mention or, for that matter, to encourage." Zuko wondered if he sounded prim. "Why?"

"Because, your highness, I have a sneaking suspicion you are not the first captive to catch our Ling-Ling's eye."

"Which would mean…?"

"Which would mean, maybe, that she's not as dumb as she looks. That maybe she's cared enough to help others escape. Or that she's just another opportunist with a sick fascination for men who are about to die." Sokka stated it as baldly and succinctly as he knew how. "In any case, it changes the picture, big time."

"I see," and he did. They would have to change their approach. Zuko's conscience eased. Then he had another thought.

"Uh, Sokka?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you still planning on gutting me?"

"You betcha. Just waiting for the right moment."

"Okay. Just checking. I've decided to fry you when you try."

"Well. Glad we're clear on that. Get some rest. I gotta think about this some more."


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: Sokka has to trust Zuko, and it just drives him crazy. Luckily, the feeling is mutual.

Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…

* * *

Sokka had decided a fairly direct approach was best. Zuko's professed admiration for Ling-Ling would rest on his assumption if (and implied approval thereof) that she had provided succor to past victims of Fire Nation brutality. At first Zuko expressed distaste for a role in which he admitted Fire Nation atrocities.

To Sokka, the prince's hesitation smacked of obstinacy for its own sake.

Ah, the advantages of being common-born. For Sokka, form was meaningless; pragmatism, action and results were what mattered. But Zuko had been raised in another world, where _every_ word he said, every action he took, had repercussions that Sokka _couldn't_ imagine. Form was a refuge from potential error. More than that, he had managed to avoid actual treasonous words to date, at least in his own mind.

So Sokka patiently explained that Zuko could limit his pretense to local Fire Nation atrocities. After all, even Zuko could admit to the errors and horrors committed by men like Zhao. Right? … Right?

"I really wish you would stop _talking_ to me like I'm an idiot."

"I really wish you would stop _acting_ like an idiot."

"You are an ignorant peasant."

"Keep telling yourself that. I know it makes you feel better"

"When we get out, I _will_ kill you."

"Have you forgotten?_ I_ have dibs on killing you _first_."

A comfortable silence fell between them, as they contemplated the various painful and humiliating indignities each wished to impose on the other. It was, after all, easier than trying to understand each other.

"If you could _just_ understand where I'm coming from, you wouldn't ask me to turn my back on my people."

"Zuko, we are past that, remember? I'm asking you to turn your back on one lousy prison and its staff, _not_ your whole fucking people."

"They are the same, symbolically."

"Really? Hmm. I think you're right. The Fire Nation and its people _are_ the equivalent of a prison and its warders. And you _wonder_ why you're hated by the rest of the world?"

"That's _not_ what I meant. You're putting words in my mouth."

"I don't have to. You're just great at it yourself."

"The prison represents the authority of the Fire Nation, of my father. I will _not_ speak against my father. I _can't_"

"_How_ is this shit-hole of a prison more of a representation of your father's authority than Zhao was? And I've _heard_ you curse Zhao quite effectively."

"Can't you just _leave it_ to me? I can _do_ this. I can _get_ her to tell me what we need to know to decide what to do next."

"You're sure?" Sokka was _far_ from sure.

"I'm sure." Zuko was _annoyed_. He was tired of Sokka's doubts.

So Zuko would attempt to extract from Ling-Ling the limits of her assistance to her past infatuations. In the meantime, Sokka and Zuko would both attempt to confirm or deny the possibility of others' escape attempts and successes.

* * *

Sokka's sources were limited. He was never allowed out of his cell. Had it not been for a narrow high window that let in a glimpse of the sky, he would have begun to wonder if perhaps the world did end beyond the walls he could see. Besides Ling-Ling and Zuko, his only human contact was an occasional grunt from the guards who came to escort Zuko to and from his cell once a day. That and the once per week gratuitous interrogation as to the avatar's plans by the prison warden. By now, both were bored with this exercise, although Sokka's interest was mildly maintained by wondering what creative punishment he would earn for his latest lack of response. Sometimes it took the better part of the week to recover.

"_As if I had anything to tell them, damn it," he bemoaned to no one the first time the warden left his cell, eyes blackened and reasonably sure at least one of his teeth were permanently loosened._

_It had been one of Zuko's more lucid moments._

"_Talk while you can, peasant. If you're lucky, they'll kill you quickly."_

"_Now that's something to look forward to… Thanks… I mean it."_

"_Fool!"_

"_That's me. If I could just figure out what he wants to hear, I'd make it up. Tell him anything."_

"_Coward."_

"_Yet an even better __description."_

Sokka almost choked imagining himself responding to the warden's question regarding Aang's whereabouts:

_"Well, sir, if you could give me a list of past escape attempts and their success rate I would be happy to provide you with a diary of Aang's comings and goings, including shit-stops, up until the point you captured me."_

It was lame, perhaps, but one took one's pleasures where one could. He would have to find a way to get the guards to talk to him.

* * *

Zuko's contacts were hardly broader. The same guards, if a longer exposure. Still, even hardened prison guards were subject to gossip among themselves. Zuko had been a compliant prisoner – it was hard to be aggressive when you felt half-concussed most of the time. He had gotten used to their idle chatter. It should be no great matter to steer their conversation to a history of the prison's scandals, which would include escapes as a matter of course.

So it was_ Zuko_ who received not only Ling-Ling's tales of her adventures aiding the prison's more romantic occupants, but also what modest data there was to evaluate her tales' authenticity. Sokka didn't like it. He simply didn't know Zuko well enough to trust his ability to not only seduce an informant but assess her reliability. After all, even Zuko admitted his brain wasn't clear these days. Still, they had little choice at this point.

"I've told you what they said, again and again, word for word. What _more_ do you want?"

"_How_ did they say it? Were they kidding around? What else were they talking about? Did they laugh, or wink at each other? Were they maybe distracted by something? Was Ling-Ling – or anyone else – in sight at the time? Come on! _Any_ of this could make a difference!"

"Damn it! You have to _trust_ me. I heard what I heard!"

And so it went. As did the seduction of Ling-Ling.


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: In which Zuko tries to understand Sokka.

Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…

**Chapter 7**

* * *

Sokka forced himself to listen, to the point of near exposure.

Zuko played his part well, and Sokka thanked a foreign court that taught its participants to act out roles without regard to personal feelings. Even when the participants were mere children.

And it appeared they knew their craft. Ling-Ling practically gushed with her tales of brave men brought low by the Fire Nation, and how _she had done her best _to help them. Zuko kept his own admiration of her efforts muted, as if he were jealous of her interest in others before him.

He _mus_t have known Sokka listened, but having an audience did not seem to perturb him. Perhaps it heightened his performance.

Sokka had swallowed his trepidation at Zuko's apparent diplomatic talents, pegging this skill in his mind's tally of Zuko in the _ambiguous _column, along with his good points and bad.

It was astonishing how crowded _that_ column had become, relative to the other two.

Of course, over each of the two boys, the passage of time weighed heavily.

"So. They really _aren't_ coming for you." Zuko still found it hard to believe.

"They sure as hell better _not _be." Sokka's voice was as grim as Zuko had ever heard it.

"Why not? Wouldn't it show that they loved you?" The word felt odd on his tongue, but he could not think of a better one for what he wanted to know.

"No. It would _not_. _'Hey Sokka, we're here now, let's run away_.' It would _completely _devalue everything I've been through here." Sokka sighed. "I expect _more_ from them, and I believe they know it."

* * *

He really _hadn't _meant to be totally honest with Zuko. But then, he hadn't expected… Zuko. Period. At this point, why be less than honest? He needed the other boy to _trust _him. He was wise enough in the ways of trust to _give _it before _expecting_ any in return. He had gone far down that road already with Zuko, and _both _of them knew it.

"So, you and your sister would go to _any_ lengths to rescue the Avatar, but you _won't_ allow him to rescue you. But he's _done_ just that, lots of times. How about that time you three emptied the prison holding of all those earth-benders? Even if I _hadn't _found evidence that you were there myself, I _saw _the reports, and the rumors _couldn't_ be stopped."

"_That _was a stupid affair, for which you can thank my idiot sister. _You'd_ probably understand perfectly. She felt honor-bound to rescue some boy she'd convinced to do earth-bending against your government's rules. Of _course_ we look out for each other. And somebody's _gotta _watch Aang's back for him. He may be the Avatar but he's _still_ just a kid. So…, that's what we do." Sokka sighed. There were limits to how much he was willing to talk about.

"But I _told_ you. We _figured_ out that in helping him we could also be hurting him, could become a _weakness_ for him. What _he _needs to do is _too important_ for him to risk himself for _us. _We talked about it and all agreed. He _understands_. Katara will make _sure_ he understands."

Silence again. But this silence was familiar to both boys, and there was no question that they each used it to advantage.

"And _you_ love them. It's _not_ just duty, is it? You… love them, both… of them." Zuko knew he was pushing it here, but why not? He sensed that there was nothing left between them but truth. Why not pursue it? He never had before. And he knew this subject was important. This was something he needed to know.

"They're family."

"_Nonsense_. Okay, your sister maybe, but the Avatar?" And what did _family_ mean as an answer, anyway? _His_ family? Okay, he loved his uncle, of course he did. How could he not? His sister? He shuddered. His father? That was a question he wasn't quite ready to face.

Sokka smiled. "Oh, _Aang's _family. Katara decided _that _long ago, and he has been officially adopted into the Water Tribe. He's a good kid. Goofy as hell, but the best. I couldn't ask for a better brother."

Sokka's smile turned wry, "Of course, I wouldn't have _minded _if someone _else_ had found him instead of us."

* * *

Zuko tried to wrap his mind around the concept of the Avatar as a brother. It simply didn't _set _well.

"_My_ sister's a demon from hell, so maybe I'm no judge. But from everything you've said, and from what I've seen myself, _your_ sister seems like an annoying, pushy bitch. Powerful, yes, but a bitch nonetheless," This was tossed out casually, just to keep the conversation going and because he was, once again visited by an image of the water-bender, this time as she thrust the ice and snow of the tundra into the air to crush him and then let him fall.

"Zuko," Sokka spoke _very _softly. "I've already promised to gut you. This is my _sister_ we are talking about. She would walk into this prison without hesitation and pluck even _you_ from that cell, leaving _me_ behind, if she thought it was the _right _thing to do. She would cry buckets of tears as she did so, but she wouldn't hesitate. Of course, she's also _more _likely to set everyone free, including murderers and rapists, in her zeal. Little idiot. She is the _finest _person I know, because she has the best sense of what is the _right_ thing to do of anyone I've ever met. I will forgive you what you just said, because you are an _ass_ and don't _know_ any better. Say it again and I _will_ give your balls to a platypus bear, and make you watch it _eat _them."

Zuko's single mobile brow lifted in surprise. Well. Without really trying, he had found the Water Tribe boy's weakness. Not that it should have been any great surprise.

The water tribes were notoriously clan-oriented, and he had seen for himself Sokka's foolhardiness in facing down a Fire Navy ship, alone, to protect his pathetic village. But Zuko himself was hard-pressed to reconcile the ill-trained savage of that day with the canny warrior on the other side of the barred wall. He was _still_ missing something.

Had he been too quick to judge, or could a mere half year change someone so much? Had _he_ changed like that?


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: Zuko figures out that Sokka hasn't been fully truthful with him.

_Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…_

* * *

Chapter 8

"Damn, she really _isn't_ the idiot she looks," Sokka swore as they pieced together corroborating accounts of two successful escapes from the prison complex. His own efforts at gathering information had improved the amount of evidence for them to evaluate.

"Right. Look at you. A living example of the truth that looks can be deceiving," Zuko smirked. "You're not as dumb as you look, either."

"Yeah. Pity you're just as mean as you look."

"I don't look mean. I look… intimidating." Zuko was affronted.

"Which is, no doubt, a _good_ thing." Sokka let him see his eyes rolling, and went back to doing pushups. After weeks of no sunshine and the same four walls, Sokka was going stir-crazy.

Zuko had amused them both early on trying to verbally walk him through a kata, but he had swiftly fallen back on his own exercise routines. He felt vaguely guilty at the relative freedom of movement he enjoyed over Zuko, but he refused to sit idle just to avoid reminding him of it. The routine of their days had settled in early on, after they first starting talking, making it easy for them to keep up a level of activity and interaction unnoticed by their jailors. Usually, Sokka exercised while Zuko meditated, but lately Sokka found it hard to sit still at all.

As Sokka's tension mounted Zuko discovered a sense of calm. He couldn't explain it, except that as their plans to escape progressed, with more and more of the actual activity (if activity it could be _called_) falling to him, Zuko's sense of self-confidence had begun to return. He felt himself beginning to regain a sense of control on his life. That he owed this in any way to Sokka niggled at his soul, but he ignored that question in the face of the concrete actions he could take.

* * *

"So. Even if she had _nothing_ to do with the escapes themselves, she seems to have the inside handle on what happened in both cases. That means she must _at least_ have been in the prisoners' confidence," Zuko summarized their conclusions.

"_And_, since their escapes were successful, and she's still around, she's smart enough not only to _not_ give them away but to cover her own tracks as well," Sokka started feeling the burn across his back, and increased his pace. "Not only that, she's _damn_ good at coming across as a fool."

As he watched Sokka, Zuko flexed the muscles in his arms. He simply did not understand how Sokka could work so hard, eat so much, and yet not appear to gain any bulk. But he could almost swear he had seen him increase in _height_ before his eyes. How tall was he going to be, anyway? He kindled a small flame in his right palm, then another in his left. Calling upon that calm deep within his chest, he willed the two flames to rise and diminish, alternating palm to palm. It was a simple exercise, but all he could manage without more play in the length of the chains that secured his wrists to the wall behind him. When he was "free" in the yard, any fire-bending at all was forbidden, so his soul relished even this small effort.

Sokka rolled over on his back, raised his arms above his head and grasped the bars that separated the two prisoners, a foot or so up from the floor. He let his breath fill his lungs, and then curled his body even as he extended his legs upward, a quick pull and push until he held himself prone, elbows at right angles, parallel to the bars, and head a few inches above the stone floor. Blood rushed to his head and Zuko smiled at the sight of the Water Tribe boy feet over ears. The first time he saw Sokka do this he had laughed outright. It was absurd on its face. The longer he held it, the redder his face got. Now, no muscle trembled, and Sokka knew his heartbeat was steady and slow. Satisfaction in small things.

"Come to that, you _also_ do a good job coming across as a fool." The corner of Zuko's mouth twitched, but he appreciated the strength and balance of Sokka's improvised handstand.

"Long practice." Sokka allowed his body to fall back to the floor, sitting up and spinning to face Zuko. "And I would guess little Ling-Ling has done the same."

"But why?" Suko asked, eyebrow cocked.

"Exactly," Sokka replied. "What's in it for _her_?"

"Besides the obvious, you mean?"

"Besides the obvious, yes."

Zuko hoped he succeeded in preventing a blush. "I dunno. Maybe it _is_ just the obvious. I mean. Look at her! Would any man pay any attention to such a dog if he weren't desperate or about to die?"

"Don't be smug. So maybe she doesn't appeal to us. I'm sure she has lovely qualities we just can't see."

"Trust me, Sokka. I know. She _has_ no qualities." Zuko gave a little moue of distaste. "I now totally believe you figured this out from the beginning, and _that_ is the real reason why I'm the one sweet-talking Ling-Ling."

Sokka grinned, "Nonsense. I just knew bull-shitting would be your major talent."

"I _will_ make you pay. Trust me."

Sokka puckered his lips in an air kiss, "Zuko, you and me. I can't wait."

"Go to hell, Sokka."

"Again, can't wait, since _you'll_ be there for me to shit on," Sokka's lips stretched taut as he pulled himself upright, pacing across his cell and his mind again occupied by the conundrum that was Ling-Ling.

Zuko's lips formed a snarl. He was sure Sokka resented his competence in dealing with the girl. Sometimes he felt on a plane with Sokka that allowed for perfect understanding. They were the same, even if so different. But everything he knew rejected this, and he thought Sokka rejected it as well.

Zuko stretched his mind to look beyond his current incarceration. If the Water Tribe youth's plan succeeded, what next? They would both be free, free to try to kill each other, of course. And he knew _that _wouldn't happen, not now. He wasn't done with Sokka. There was still too much he didn't understand. And he needed to understand!

He didn't know why. It shouldn't have mattered. He could accept knowing he owed Sokka for including him in his escape. It was rational to seek assistance in a perilous venture, and Sokka was definitely a rational being. But there was more. He recognized that Sokka had, somehow, refused to let something besides his body die. He was no fool, and he knew that Sokka had used Zuko's pride to manipulate him, to rouse him out of apathy. But Zuko was his _enemy_, and this was _not_ rational, not as he saw it.

Now his mind was consumed with Sokka, and the need to know him. Well, he already knew that Sokka's weakness was his family, specifically his sister. Zuko's stomach tightened with the memory of the water-bender, a reaction he had not yet analyzed beyond a desire for revenge. And _that_ was beside the point.

The simple truth was that Sokka had impressed him. The one he had thought of as a clumsy rube now appeared in his eyes to be the better man. Yes, Zuko hated him. But more, he needed to _chang_e that picture. He needed to impress Sokka. So, he needed to understand him. He determined to pursue their earlier conversation. Because something there still didn't fit, and it would be the key he needed. He knew it.

* * *

"Leave it alone, Zuko"

"Admit it. If the tables were turned, if _she _were the one in prison, you wouldn't let it go."

"I would. I'd have to."

"You know, you _don't_ lie very well." Zuko no longer even had to look at the Water Tribe boy. The tables had turned, and his words were torture to Sokka. And now Zuko _understood_ the edge in his voice. That edge that had been there all along. Eyes closed, Zuko let his whole body relax and his lips curled in a satisfied smile. His head, usually heavy with the dull pain of continually sustained blows, felt light and clear.

"You think you're smart enough to beat anyone else. So. How would _you_ stop the Avatar from coming along as you tried to rescue your sister?"

"I wouldn't. I _wouldn't_ try to rescue her."

Zuko ignored the quiet voice, driven onward by the power of his revelation. "Oh. _I_ know. You'd convince him that you could do it _on your own_. You'd even share your plan with him to reassure him. But we both know you'd be _wrong_, and he would come along anyway. How did you put it? He'd come to _watch your back_."

"You're wrong, Zuko. Dead wrong."

"And _that's_ the real reason you're so desperate to escape."

Uncle Iroh had been right. Once you knew your enemy you _could_ think like him. He made a mental note to consider his uncle's proverbs more seriously if in fact he survived this experience.

"You're afraid, Sokka. Afraid that they did try to rescue you after all, and without you they _failed_. We might never know. Why would anyone bother telling _us_ if the Avatar or his companion were finally caught? It must be eating you up inside, worrying about it."

The silence from the next cell had an eerie quality to it. As if it were suddenly empty. And Zuko was reminded of a corridor of ice and black water, cold and still. He opened his eyes and turned to look for his neighbor.

Sokka's face was at a level with his own as he crouched just on the other side of the bars. His eyes bored into Zuko's, his features an unreadable mask. A lifetime passed as gold eyes met blue, perhaps several lifetimes. Neither one breathed.

"So?" Zuko asked.

"So." Sokka responded.


	9. Chapter 9

_A/N: You may not have noticed it, but to date only Zuko and Sokka have spoken, and they have had a conversation every chapter. It has been a little conceit of this story line. I depart from this in this chapter. No one speaks. They have much to think about._

Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…

Chapter 9

The warden had left a little faster than usual.

When Sokka had given yet another flippant response to the query regarding the Avatar's plans, he'd merely grabbed him by the shoulders and thrown him across the cell, cursing Sokka for wasting time. But Sokka didn't care. He even looked forward to the warden's visits, because _they_ were his assurance that Aang and Katara had, in fact, lived up to their agreement. The warden wouldn't waste his _own_ time questioning Sokka if Aang were captured. _Would_ he?

But the truth was, Sokka wasn't so sure. This prison was in a true back-water of the Fire Nation occupied territories. At first, he had wondered why Zuko, or he himself, for that matter, would have been kept here instead of moved to a more prominent location, such as in the Fire Nation itself. He knew he at least was a prominent target – it would be a waste of resources to have forces continue to look for him after his capture.

Zuko himself resolved the former question, bitterly explaining his father's fury over his failures, and his own assumption that the less fuss made about him - even his execution - the better. As for Sokka's presence there, he soon realized that the answer lay in the Fire Nation's hope that the Avatar would be encouraged to attempt a rescue from a location fairly near the front lines. But the prison was far enough removed that Sokka wasn't sure it received _regular_ communications. And what if Katara had attempted a rescue _alone_, a rescue that failed? Would any mention be made of a lone Water Tribe girl? Was even now, Katara being held somewhere for activities against the Fire Nation?

Zuko was right. Sokka felt that his heart lived somewhere at the bottom of his left boot these days, and that there were no other organs left in his body at all. Just a giant tape-worm of worry. Did it matter that Zuko knew? Well. _That_ was just something he would have to deal with later.

* * *

It didn't matter. And yet. There _had_ been a shift in the air between the two cells. This shift was more subtle than the one marking Sokka's increased agitation and Zuko's newfound calm. While Sokka still regularly insulted Zuko, his target's responses were no longer surly, and if smoke occasionally flared Zuko's nostrils, it would be accompanied by a lazy smile.

Sokka wished he still had his boomerang. The act of throwing it, the easy reflex of muscles that required no thinking beyond focus on a target, left his brain free to weigh a given problem's complexities without forced concentration. He had yet to find an exercise that equaled it. And he wanted - no, _needed - _the structure and time constraints boomerang-throwing imposed on his concentration. He knew he was over-thinking things. He knew he had lost the upper hand with Zuko.

Worse yet. _Zuko_ knew it, too. Shit. Normally, Sokka didn't really worry about what scum thought of him. But Zuko? _He_ could make a difference.

* * *

There was nothing in Ling-Ling's expression to suggest she was aware of being observed. She spent no more, nor no less time in Sokka's cell than normal, and he maintained his usual position, sitting in the corner with his arms folded across his chest, giving her plenty of room.

Could he do it? No. That wasn't the right question. _Should_ he do it. Should he build in a safety-net? As it were, double-time Zuko. Why? Because he didn't trust Zuko's ability to seduce the prison drudge? Well. It was patently obvious that Zuko was _quite_ competent at that. Almost _unpleasantly_ competent, despite Sokka's expectations. No. Because he didn't _trust_ Zuko. And this hurt, even though it fit all his expectations.

Sokka was a creature bred of a specific, harsh environment. An environment that did not forgive wasted effort. He had invested effort in Zuko, only the spirits – or Aang and Katara – could guess why. Sokka followed Ling-Ling with his eyes. Perhaps it was false pride, and he would regret it, but he was not _yet _prepared to write off his investment, even for a backup plan. Luckily, there was all that newfound distance between his head and his heart. The tape worm roared.

* * *

Sokka was off-balance, and Zuko knew it. The warrior's heart in Zuko thrummed a happy harmony. From here, it would be easy to topple the other boy. Yes, the Water Tribe boy had gifts that Zuko envied. Yes, he admired and respected him. But he _could_ take him. And that was how it _should_ be.

Zuko straightened his shoulders and lifted his chin as he walked between his guards back to the block of a building that housed a half-dozen cells, all empty but two. He noted again the distances to the common well, the longer block that held a host of prisoners of war and assorted common criminals, and the drainage ditch lining the near wall. He remembered that on the other side of that wall lay several large buildings with dormers for the guards and the warden's office, the kitchens and storage sheds, and yet another wall.

Physically, Zuko knew he was far from his best. But he had learned from _this_ as well. Uncle Iroh had been right about this, as so many other things. Fire came from the breath, not the muscles. Zuko had learned, finally, how to savor each breath. How every time he breathed his muscles received new fuel, how every time he ignored the steady pumping of his heart, the fire within him failed, and no amount of fury would sustain it.

Somewhere within his soul came the greater fire. He knew _this_, as well. The fire that burned so hot it was nearly blue. The fire that didn't burn but _blasted_, leaving no flame but only char and cinders. _Uncle_ could tap it; and never did. He knew _Azula_ could and _did_ use it – would have seared _him_ with it if not for Uncle. His father was the greatest fire-bender of the age, wasn't he? His own ancestor had drawn upon the heavens themselves to launch the Fire Nation on its path to glory. _This_ was his heritage. Where did _his_ breath fit into this greater heat? Surely he could tap this power as well, and why _shouldn't_ he?

Zuko understood power on these terms. It was that power that had affirmed his family's rights. Ultimate power was the response to every question. Only the Avatar threatened the Fire Nation's ultimate power.

* * *

Power. His uncle, the man he truly most respected, had walked _away_ from it. The Avatar, a mere child, possessed it but didn't _know_ how to exercise it. His father, of course, _embodied_ it, and taught him from the first to respect and honor it.

And then, there was _Sokka._ Zuko was confounded again by the conflict of his own perceptions. Sokka held _no_ power. None! Hardly more than a child himself, a product of a backwards, nearly extinct culture. No training, no education worth talking about. He couldn't even bend! He was… _ordinary._

He and that sister of his, whom he seemed to cherish beyond all reason. Sokka had accused Zuko of arrogance – what arrogance was it to take on the mantle of protectors of the Avatar! Hah! Who _did_ they think they were? And yet, together they _had_ eluded the grasp of the Fire Nation's best. Zuko was not so modest as to exclude himself from this assessment. Not with the Dragon of the West in his corner. Could that be attributed solely to the Avatar, powerful as he was? No. So there _was_ something special about the Water Tribe pair. Something about the girl's passion, and clearly _something_ about the boy's brains. Together, they were an extraordinary force.

Ozai would look at the evidence, and the solution would be obvious. Destroy the Avatar's companions. Then he could imprison the Avatar himself. Let nothing stand in the way of the Fire Nation's destiny. _He who is not with me is against me._ Zuko would bear the scar of _that_ lesson all of his life. He expected to learn no greater truth from his father.

But the last three years had _hardly _been so clearly delineated. Now, everything he saw was thrown against the background of those years, and the lines of right and wrong often mutated with every breath. And, since his first encounter with the Avatar this sense of ambiguity had only grown _stronger_, more oppressive. He _longed _for the clarity of his childhood. His father considered him a failure for letting the Avatar escape him. How much greater a failure would he think him if he knew that Zuko had lost his sight?

Zuko resented his uncle for refusing to tear away the shrouds of confusion his experiences drew across his vision. He hated the Avatar for seeming to be oblivious to the shrouds.

And he hatedSokka most of all for _seeing _the shrouds and walking through them unimpeded. In his mind's eye, he watched Sokka striding through his life, fully aware that the ground beneath his feet was shifting, but unconcerned by it. He saw Sokka glance back at him, brows raised in question, and then turn away and continue on. _This_ much their time together in prison had given him.

Sokka _hated_ the Fire Nation, but did not seem to hate its people. When Zuko considered the question honestly he was sure Sokka had good reason to hate the Fire Nation, and him in particular. Without lifting a finger, _he _could have watched his enemy die. Instead, Sokka had placed himself at yet greater risk to change Zuko's destiny.

The Water Tribe boy was clever – as clever as anyone he had ever met, and that included Uncle! – brave, if foolishly so; loyal, again to a fault; wholly lacking in reverence – was this good or bad? - and possessed of that odd gift of humor that made his company easy, if somewhat annoying.

He could not think of someone he dreaded more facing, or someone he would rather have at his side.

The only answer was to break him beneath his feet.


	10. Chapter 10

A/N: So they've had a confrontation. You would think they would want to talk about it, work things out. But these are boys. Are they going to deal with this confrontation? Hell no, boys being boys they will simply ignore it. Yeah. _That_ will work.

Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…

Chapter 10

"We need to start the time-table," Zuko said. Did Sokka hear a challenge in the statement, or was he only listening for one?

"I wish we knew more. Getting out, that's easy. Getting away, _that's_ the hard part," Sokka was torn by his own anxiety to be gone and the fuzziness of their plan once they were past the prison walls.

"I _don't_ get you. Every time we've run up _against_ each other, you've just acted without hesitation. _Now_ you can't seem to make up your mind," Zuko was frustrated.

"And every time we've run up against each other, there was _no time_ to consider our options, dipshit." Sokka wondered yet again how Zuko could be so smart and yet so amazingly dumb! "And, you may recall, our original plans _failed_ as often as not."

"Oh. So you're not such a brilliant strategist after all?"

"No, I'm_ not_ brilliant. I – _we've _been damned lucky!" Sokka growled under his breath that he'd like to see Zuko do better. He would have liked to claim a higher victory record, but history had taught him not to boast. "A good plan requires testing, and we _don't_ have that luxury. We just have to run it through between us, looking for holes. And then," and here he voiced the kicker. "We _have_ to run it through Ling-Ling. _No one_ will know better than her if it will work."

Zuko blanched, his pale skin achieving a hue beyond Sokka's limited experience. "Then we are dead. I know you think she's smart. All right. I admit, she _must_ be smart. But _what_ is a smart girl doing in a backwater prison system? If she were _really_ smart she would be running this place."

Sokka allowed himself a smile at Zuko's expense, the first in several days. "I have two answers to that. First, what are the chances for a smart – ugly – girl in the Fire Nation to get ahead? Second, what makes you so sure that she isn't, _in fact_, running this place already?"

Zuko's next skin tone brought yet new breadth to Sokka's color wheel, making him wonder about the benefits of something to shade vision.

"You _are_ kidding me, right?" Zuko thought about the pleasantries he had murmured in Ling-Ling's ear, and felt his lunch revolt.

Sokka thanked the spirits for the shortcomings of clever princes.

"I wish I were. It's up to _you_ to figure out just how much leeway we have in creating a time-table. I think we can take it as a given that she knows how and when this place operates. How much she's willing to _share_ with us is up to _you_."

How _far_ are you willing to _go_ to find out, was Sokka's unasked question. And because he was inherently honest, he asked himself the same question. But he knew the answer, even as he knew it before they had determined that Ling-Ling was more than a simple dupe to their stratagems.

* * *

Sokka had _always_known he would be called upon to kill. Pinioned in his memory was the death of the great ice-bear that he had wrought, less than a year ago. It had been a cause for celebration, yet also a time of awe. And yet more recently he stood before the younglings of the Southern Water Tribe, exhorting them to show no fear when faced with the enemy. Oh yes, he had felt fear when he faced his first Fire Navy ship.

Before the siege of the North Pole he had battered heads and broken bones, but he had not actually taken human life before defending Yue and her tribe. As they fought their way back to the oasis and Katara, Sokka knew he had taken more than one life, and wondered at how much less he had felt at _that _taking than he had felt when he killed the great ice-bear. This remained a mystery for him, and he looked forward to the day when he could resolve it.

At the same time, it was easier to think of that life-taking, than of the uncounted lives he had slain in those unguarded minutes that had resulted in his most recent incarceration. The betrayal by the merchant, the soldiers massing around him, and the frightening carnage his unthinking vision had registered as he had drawn both boomerang and saber to defend himself…

He hoped it would be a resolution the Sokka he _used _to be could live with.

Given the talk among the guards of the prison, Sokka suspected that his own count didn't really measure the deathtoll that encounter had taken, and he wondered, for the first time aloud, what kind of man he would return to his friends.

* * *

Zuko had lost track of the scores he counted against Sokka. He wanted desperately to believe that they outweighed the debts owed. Well, perhaps there was no _real_ accounting for the debts owed. His own innate honestly required _that _much acknowledgement. Which, of course, only intensified his hatred for Sokka. Guilt was an unlooked for rift in Zuko's hard-won sense of calm. It was intensely annoying that _every_ time he tried to look at the future the Water Tribe boy's face intruded itself upon his mind's eye. He wondered if, even when they both were free of the prison, he would be free of Sokka's hold on his imagination.

It was strange how little he felt he had gained from knowing Sokka's great secret. He realized now that the triumph he had felt had originated in his unraveling of it, not in the value of the secret itself. And, of course, in showing Sokka that he had figured it out – that he could keep up with him. More important still, he had wanted to take that look of superiority from Sokka's smirk.

As for the secret itself, its implications were various. It meant Sokka was fully aware that his own emotions could over-run his logic, and he feared this. It meant that the Avatar was probably either very near or, worst case, already a prisoner. It meant that Sokka didn't trust him despite bringing him into his escape plans.

Well, of course, why should he? This made much more sense than that Sokka should care about what happened to him. But he didn't like it.

"All things considered, we've actually been pretty lucky," Zuko mused.

"Absolutely. Not everybody gets to spend their days being fed at others' expense, and all that worry about maybe dying of some terrible illness? Not for us," The only thing Sokka found interesting about Zuko's statement was the use of the word "we".

"Ass. I mean that we could be in a prison where the guards were a bunch of diligent, well-trained soldiers, not these shit-for-brains brutes marking time for their return home."

"Emphasis on the word 'brutes'," Sokka rubbed gingerly at a shoulder that had been savagely poked when he made the mistake of leaning against the front wall of bars on Zuko's last return to his cell. "Point taken, though. Not to mention, these guys talk a lot!"

"I think we're considered easy duty," Zuko shrugged. "We don't make trouble, and there are just the two of us. Since they don't let you out, in effect there's just me."

"And _you're_ nothing to worry about," Sokka grinned wryly. Zuko returned the grin.

"Right."

"They have been extraordinarily helpful. And you're right, extraordinarily stupid," It had taken very little prompting for the guards to decide varying the walk to and from the exercise yard and latrines was good for their own boredom levels, giving Zuko the opportunity to scope out their options for escaping the complex once they were free of their cells.

The silence that followed was comfortable, holding none of the tension of the last couple days.

* * *

Zuko found himself wishing he could invoke this comfort level at will, instead of having to rely on those moments when the solidarity of their shared state overcame their shared history. Of course, this conflicted with his need to maintain Sokka as his enemy, to keep his understanding of his own identity intact. Zuko had lived with discomfort in his relationships all his life. He could live with it now. He could turn his back on regret.

Sokka allowed himself to relax. Zuko was not to be trusted, but he knew now that the Fire Prince had the natural wit to delay any hostile acts until after their escape. He would not betray Sokka – it would run too contrary to his nature and his pride. Sokka's candid exposure of his limitations would work for them, and not against _him_ until later. He needed Zuko to be able to think for himself and not rely wholly on him. Certainly, he had not meant to reveal so much, and he regretted his own missteps there, more for Aang's sake than his own. Zuko had surprised him. A calculated risk that could well back-fire. Oh well. One day at a time.


	11. Chapter 11

_A/N: You have no idea how difficult it is to break out of prison. First you have to figure out what the problems will be. Then you have to figure out ways to solve the problems. And it shouldn't be too easy. Is Ling-Ling going to help or not? And I don't really want them getting too cosy yet, but they need to be able to trust each other. So we've a long way to go._

_To those who have reviewed, thank you! Does anybody care that only Zuko and Sokka have speaking parts? Not that I intend to change anything, I'm just curious._

_Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…_

**Chapter 11**

"'Getting out is easy', you said. Have I said you are full of _shit_? I have? Obviously, _not_ often enough – it hasn't sunk in!"

"_You_ said you'd broken out of bigger places than this – you got Aang _out_ of Zhao's fortress, and _it _was much more heavily guarded than this place." It had been a blow to Sokka's pride to learn that Zuko had been able to help Aang when he couldn't. He understood that this had been a self-interested act on Zuko's part, but he was still impressed at the sheer bravado it had taken to attempt it.

And it still bothered his pride, even knowing that he had been completely incapacitated at the time.

That said, Sokka thought courage for its own sake was stupid and a waste of resources. But he couldn't help but appreciate it.

"The facilities were better designed – actual lined drainage culverts, not just clogged ditches, regular patrols, and it _was_ a military base, not a prison. Totally different mindset," Zuko hated to admit that he was discouraged. "And yes, we never would have gotten out without the Avatar's air-bending. Even if I _had_ dared to fire-bend."

"There will be no reason for you _not _to fire-bend this time. You've nothing to hide. There don't appear to be any fire-benders assigned here, which _is_ strange considering they have _you _to guard," Sokka wanted to address all of Zuko's concerns. Even the unspoken ones.

"If you were a _bender_, you would understand how _hard_ it is to bend when you can't even think," Zuko was tired of the constant headaches, but recognized that they, too, had given him something – he had learned to bend, if only a little, even when his head throbbed and his stomach turned with nausea.

"So, they _expected_ that. And aren't we lucky - you can fire-bend after all! You did say you could climb, so the walls shouldn't be an issue. The armory is almost certainly unguarded, maybe even unlocked. Find out from Ling-Ling – we will want weapons as soon as possible. You're right about the irregularity of things here – we can't rely on the change of duty shift. But we can make it work _for _us. It will take them a while to figure out if and why any particular guard is missing at any time. No wonder there have been escapes. I tell you, this _won't_ be that hard."

* * *

Sokka had climbed sheer glaciers and ice-bergs as a child, without benefit of knife or club. He didn't anticipate any challenge in rough stone, with its innumerable hand and toe-holds. And Zuko had said he had no problem with climbing. Of course, the simple reality was that Sokka had a lot more experience with running than Zuko had.

Although Sokka had to admit, Zuko's sister's pursuit certainly did not lack fervor, and it was only due to the Avatar's luck that they had eluded her to date.

In fact, he thought to himself, if he had stayed with Aang and Katara, and not ventured into that random village on his own, in all likelihood that factor of Avatar's luck that he refused to believe in… probably wouldn't have abandoned him.

But how was he to know that his own face was almost as familiar as that of the Avatar on wanted posters? Or that this particular village would have had visitors in the form of a new garrison from the Fire Nation, horribly _well-informed_ and zealous in bringing down the Fire Nation's enemies, even at the cost of four of their number?

Sokka only wished he could have taken out more.

But he was wanted _alive_ then. They would not have this advantage when they tried their prison escape.

* * *

"You don't need to know everything," Zuko said stubbornly, yet again.

"I need to know what she expects from you for as long as _we _are at risk. We _both_ need to be sure that she believes you, that she _trusts _you," Sokka insisted firmly. "She has a lot more experience at this than either of us, and she _could _be playing you for a fool."

Zuko had skillfully allowed Ling-Ling to be the one to suggest that she help him escape as word circulated that a date for his execution had finally been set. He protested his worry about repercussions for such an act to her, and she had reminded him of her prior experience doing just this. As he drew out details of a possible plan from her, he professed admiration for her cleverness. When it came time to express his appreciation, his voice fell to a low murmur that Sokka couldn't make out.

"She says she can get us out both gates," Zuko kept his voice even. "You said yourself that getting over the walls in our condition could be a problem, and the drainage ditch is almost certainly out."

"No, she said she could get _you_ outside both walls," Sokka corrected. Actually, he was still confident of his own ability to scale the walls, but had become less so of Zuko's. While not as fit as he might have wished, he still hadn't taken as much punishment as Zuko. "I can almost believe it, too. But 'you' is not 'us'. What do you honestly think she's gonna say when there are suddenly two of us? 'Oh, _goody_'? Hah!"

"Do you have a better idea?"

"Hey, no. Go for it," Sokka held up both hands in protest. "I don't want to queer your chances. Just make sure I have the cell key and _some _warning when you leave and I'll find my own way."

"What? You think you've got a better shot doing it alone?" Zuko was infuriated, and felt a little stab of… fear.

Which was stupid. He could manage alone. He knew that. So what was he afraid of?

"I'm not saying that. I'm saying that she'll go spastic if you change the equation on her at the last minute. It could all fall apart."

"Well then, I'll just suggest that we need to bring you along so you don't raise the alarm when you find me gone," Zuko thought rapidly. "_That_ will make sense, and give her time to figure out how to get both of us out."

Sokka was oddly touched. He had no misconceptions regarding Zuko's motivations, but was no less impressed with Zuko's concept of honor's demands.

"Not bad," he admitted. "But is one prisoner likely to raise a fuss at the escape of another?"

"C'mon. You lose no opportunity to snipe at me when someone's around—"

"Like _you_ shower me with _compliments_?" Sokka interrupted.

"–So if you thought you could curry _favor_ by turning me in, why wouldn't you?"

"Why wouldn't I, indeed," Sokka gave the idea more consideration… "All right, give it a try. But rather than suggest you bring me along, just raise the question of me causing trouble, and see where she takes it."

Zuko rolled his eyes. "Well, yeah. Of course. I _thought_ you were paying attention to how I've been managing this. Did you suddenly fall asleep or something?"

"Sorry. _Some_ things are better forgotten." Sokka shuddered. "And _you _said you didn't know how to flirt. Remind me to keep you away from my sister."

"Your sister? Ah, now that you mention it, she _is_ kinda pretty," Zuko couldn't resist.

"Ah, Zuko? You _don't_ talk about my sister, remember?"

"_You_ brought her up, not me," Zuko yawned.

It was mildly interesting that Sokka seemed impervious to personal insults, but the vaguest slight to his sister made the hackles rise. Well, he hadn't actually slighted her with his comment – anything but, and if he _thought_ about it, there were other interesting aspects to the idea of romancing the water bender, besides driving her brother batshit…

* * *

"We still need an _alternative_ plan. I'm thinking we should keep this simple and flexible – less chance for things to go wrong," He would ignore Zuko's gibes.

They were both under a lot of stress, and trusting each other was a foreign concept. The insults were their way of reminding each other not to assume too much from a temporary alliance. This was understood. In point of fact, Sokka had rather enjoyed verbally sparring with Zuko, especially once the other boy had emerged from whatever depression had consumed him when first they found themselves imprisoned together.

It wasn't much fun to beat a dead horse.

Strange, though. Sometimes a beating was more effective than kindness. While Sokka hadn't known this would be the case with Zuko, he had known that if the other couldn't take his abuse he would be worthless to anyone, including himself. He had been oddly relieved to discover the reserves of determination that Zuko had harbored beneath his despair.

He still wondered, a bit, why he had bothered in the first place, though.

"Makes sense to me. Planning is _your_ job. Don't mess it up," The prince commanded. Sokka took a deep breath. It's a pity Zuko had to be such a shit. It did make him wonder…


	12. Chapter 12

_A/N: Sokka's going to put his foot in it this time, and things will be getting a bit complicated for Zuko as a result._

_Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…_

* * *

**Chapter 12**

There was no mistaking the speculative glint in Ling-Ling's eye the next time she ventured into Sokka's cell to bring fresh water and exchange the vessels for night soil and other wastes. He varied his own mien only by the addition of insolent inquiry as she slammed the barred door closed with unwonted force; it wouldn't do to suggest he understood her agitation.

As he had expected, she had not considered Sokka in her plans once Zuko had proven receptive to her as agent of mercy. He and Zuko would have to be particularly circumspect in their conversations until it was established as to whether or not Ling-Ling would aid in Sokka's escape as well.

"That went well," Sokka had also noted the lack of the fruit that had become a staple on Zuko's lunch plate since the start of his courtship of Ling-Ling.

"You were right," he growled. "She isn't happy."

"I think it is time I officially took notice of your relationship," Sokka grimaced. "It had to happen sometime anyway. And we are running out of time."

It was true. It was now just a matter of weeks. Zuko's execution was scheduled before Sokka's, but they were separated by mere days. It appeared the Fire Nation had either given up on the Avatar, or Sokka's presence was no longer deemed necessary. He found it harder to maintain his air of nonchalance as he considered this, and became even more determined to escape. The backup plan also attained urgency.

* * *

Sokka getting out of his cell without benefit of key was the crux of the backup plan. Given that, it had two versions. One included Zuko, and perforce meant escaping during his exercise period and the requisite taking out of a number of guards, since a plan for freeing Zuko from his shackles continued to elude him. The other was a simple night escape over the walls.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

Sokka's cell consisted of three barred walls – one shared with Zuko's cell, and a metal-plated wall with a high barred window (this last installed by the Fire Nation to hinder any unknown earth-benders). The window was too narrow for even Sokka's skinny frame, even if he had managed to loosen the bars. The lock on the door fitted into the front barred wall was new and well maintained.

But the hinges on that door were as old as the original building, and Sokka had wasted no time in aiding their aging with generous applications of water since his first day of imprisonment. He may not be a bender but he understood water's capabilities perfectly well.

He had wiped the telltale rust from the outside of the hinges each morning, and every night while Zuko slept Sokka worked those hinges, applying pressure from a variety of angles. And every time the door was opened, admittedly infrequently, the hinges groaned in protest. With time, he had no doubt they would give. But _time _was a luxury he didn't have.

* * *

Sokka's campaign of whining about Ling-Ling's favoritism was limited to her ears, and he made sure she was aware that he kept it so. After the first day, he began to imply a form of blackmail (reminding her of the warden's visits to him), couched behind requests for improved living conditions during what were, after all, supposed to be his last weeks.

Her manner towards him grew colder, but his fare began to resemble Zuko's in quality, her forays to "clean" his cell became more frequent, and the ratty cover on his sleeping mat was replaced. He acknowledged these improvements with exaggerated gratitude. Once he even apologized to her for his inability to offer Zuko more privacy, suggesting with a leer that perhaps he should be allowed to exercise in the yard.

She never spoke to him, but he knew she watched him now as she entered the corridor, her eyes seeking him out first before proceeding to Zuko's cell.

* * *

"Sokka, you surprise me," It was Zuko's turn to be impressed with his fellow prisoner. "I do believe she's afraid of you now."

"That _was_ the point, wasn't it?" Sokka said crossly. "She's not going to help me because she loves me."

"Just don't push it. She may decide to kill you herself, instead of waiting for your execution."

"I guess _that_ would solve everyone's problems now, wouldn't it?"

"No. That's a pleasure I've reserved for myself." Zuko rolled his shoulders and clenched his fists. His arms and back ached. They always ached, but he supposed that was better than being numb. "Do you actually think she can arrange for you to get out of that cell once in a while?"

"I'm curious as to just what she can manage," Sokka tried to focus on the matters at hand, and not his sister or Aang. "Why? Do you _want_ some privacy with her?"

"Hell no!"

Sokka laughed. It felt good to laugh. Zuko looked askance, and then chuckled himself.

* * *

Neither laughed when, on his next visit, the warden told Sokka, after delivering a vicious kick to the gut that left him wheezing on the stone floor, that as a form of clemency he would be permitted a daily walk in the prison yard for the remainder of his stay. Under guard, of course.

He was still prone on his cell floor some minutes after the warden left.

Zuko shook his head in disbelief. "How? How _did_ she do it?"

Sokka groaned, lifting himself to his knees. "I have no idea. Do you _still_ wonder if she's in charge?"

"I only wonder how much longer I'm safe."

Sokka scooted across the floor to sit with his back resting on the bars that separated them. "You do realize this means that if she _says_ she can get us out she can in fact _do_ it?"

He was surprised at the length of silence it took for Zuko to answer him.

"You don't suppose _she's_ the reason this place seems to be so poorly managed, do you?" Zuko finally asked in return, glad to be distracted from thinking about his relationship with Ling-Ling and what lay in its future.

It was, in fact, a very good question.

"But that brings us back to motivation. Why? And how is she getting away with it? This place is truly a shit-hole. So tell me, Prince Zuko, is this prison _typical_ of the Fire Nation, or what?" It was good for Sokka to have something to think about besides their chances for escape and what he would do next.

"_I _don't know. I don't think so. I haven't been home in three years, damn it, and it's not like I ever made a practice of visiting prisons. But… no, this place is a joke."

"And yet, these _are _Fire Nation troops. _She's_ Fire Nation. How would so many dregs end up in one place?"

"It's either an amazing example of bureaucracy gone mad or someone's actually orchestrating it."

* * *

Sokka had no experience with large organizations, but he could see no point behind what appeared to be a nascent conspiracy theory. "_Or _Ling-Ling has been _very _lucky in the placement of personnel over time. Uh, Zuko, do you suppose she isn't _really_ a drudge? Like, I don't know, maybe she actually _chooses_ to do scut-work for a select few prisoners, for her _own_ purposes?"

"Oh sure. She's really the warden's _daughter_, and _he _lets her take care of political prisoners for shits and giggles." Zuko snorted.

"So? It _is_ the warden who is supposed to be in charge, right? Wouldn't he approve transfers in and out? And, come to think about it, he certainly strikes me as a _lazy_ ass. I mean, look how he's handled interrogating me – pathetic!" Sokka's brain was in its happy mode. Connections were slipping into place with the ease of a somewhat blotted-out blueprint, only a maze for those unable to see the big picture.

"You're _not _serious."

"She's too _young_ to be his lover. I think. Right? I bet she really _is_ his daughter. It would explain a lot, wouldn't it?"

"And she does this because…?" Zuko was beginning to accept Sokka's logic.

"Like _you_ said. Shits and giggles. Romance she's not likely to get otherwise." Sokka turned to Zuko with an evil grin. "Interludes of passion in an environment where she is in control."

Zuko winced, "Did you _have _to remind me?"

"Uh, you don't have to tell me about it. In fact, please _don't_."

"I don't suppose you could keep these walks of yours brief?"

Sokka looked at Zuko again, some sympathy playing across his features. "Man, I don't even _like _you, remember? And I haven't been out in weeks!"

Zuko closed his eyes and sighed. "It's all your fault. I'm _in_ this because of you."

"Shit. All right. It's better if they think I have no stamina anyway." He thought a moment.

"Zuko. Just how bad off are you, really? Will you be able to run, to fight, if need be?"

"Worry about yourself, peasant. I can do whatever I have to." He met Sokka's eyes and managed a weak smile. It wobbled a bit and leveled out. "Whatever!"

* * *

_A/N: Zoiks!_


	13. Chapter 13

_A/N: It may have occurred to you that prison could be considered a metaphor for life. We are all constrained by the external conditions around us, and those conditions vary from person to person. How we deal with those constraints and each other determines the kind of person we are and will become. Sometimes the constraints we share bring us closer together. Sometimes the differences drive us apart. Oh sorry, you don't want me waxing philosophical. You're here to find out what happens next!_

_Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…_

* * *

**Chapter 13**

The sky was grey and overcast, no sun visible. In this part of the occupied Earth Kingdom the haze was as much a result of humidity as cloud cover, and late spring had brought a heat wave to add to the general discomfort for inmates and warders alike.

Still, for Sokka the warm, damp breath of the wind was a kiss from a forgotten lover.

He honestly didn't feel he dare try to influence the guards on this first foray beyond his cell, and he wanted to take the opportunity to confirm as much as possible Zuko's reports.

But he kept his steps to a shuffle, and feigned a stumble here and there. It was easy enough to do – ankles and wrists had been shackled, and Sokka was struck by the odd reversal of their roles. Zuko's time outside his cell was free of restraints beyond his guards' vigilance. Of course, _his _stumbling would be due to being clubbed, and the guards kept close indeed. Sokka was heavily shackled now, and only had one guard. Within his cell he was free, confined only by the walls of the cell itself. Zuko couldn't move away from the wall or lower his arms, and he was forced to sleep in a sitting position.

When Sokka was led back into the cell block reserved for state prisoners, they met Ling-Ling coming out. Her face was a mask, and Sokka kept his own expression bland. However, he couldn't resist a lazy wink when he was sure he had her gaze. The response was just the faintest change in the set of her shoulders, but it was enough for Sokka.

Small pleasures, small pleasures.

* * *

Zuko himself appeared to be dozing when the door was closed behind Sokka, again free of shackles. He stretched and shook out his arms and legs before settling down on his pallet, eyes on the corridor and the closed door beyond. He wondered if he should be the one to break the silence first.

He decided to think about the backup plan, and how many guards he and Zuko would have to take down in order to scale the first wall safely. Would it make sense to lose time in taking weapons from the armory or simply make for the outer wall, relying on Zuko's fire-bending and his own close-combat skills? He really _didn't_ like this plan.

He longed to work under the cover of night, a loving moon his only witness.

But that version of the backup plan meant leaving Zuko behind. Sokka gave a purely mental sigh, and consigned the simple, most hopeful version of the backup plan to mental oblivion. Leaving Zuko behind was just _not _an option any more.

And he didn't want to think about Ling-Ling.

* * *

Zuko was torn.

He was unsure himself how to address what Sokka had so casually dubbed the "interlude of passion" they both had expected to take place with Sokka's removal from the cell block.

He was a young man. Perfectly normal and relatively healthy – if you discounted terribly stiff muscles throughout his body, the constant throbbing of his head, and the occasional queasiness of his guts. He was well-educated in the arts and sciences as well as the ways of war. He was, after all, a prince.

And he was completely inexperienced in the actual physical acts of affection between a man and a woman.

He had relied on the excuse of his shackled state to cover any flaws in his performance. And he just knew there would be flaws.

But he owed it to himself and to Sokka to see this through to the best of his abilities.

Therefore, when the door to the corridor opened and Ling-Ling approached, Zuko found himself mentally preparing himself as for battle. Well, was there a better way to consider this?

* * *

"Did you have a nice walk?" Zuko's voice was oddly hoarse. Sokka didn't remember hearing this in it before.

"Lovely. Glad you warned me it was as much of a shit-hole outside as well as in." Which one would broach the subject?

"At least it isn't freezing, like where you come from," Zuko countered.

"Sez the world traveler! Do you mean you're too stupid after all to appreciate nature at its most…most intimidating?"

"Screw that, Sokka. Don't try to tell me it isn't stupid for people to live where every day it's a question as to whether or not they're gonna freeze."

"Sometimes," Sokka said seriously, "people don't have much _choice_ as to where they live. And therefore it really pisses them off when someone else – someone who thinks they are so much better and smarter – just decides to wander in and make things worse!"

"Okay, okay. Sorry." Zuko mumbled. And was appalled to find he had actually apologized to Sokka. He really needed to get a better grip on himself.

"No. _I'm_ sorry," Sokka sighed. "I was being pompous. Can't imagine where that came from."

Silence.

"That was a joke."

"Not funny."

…

* * *

"So, how many guards do you think are on duty in the mornings, you know, when you're out?" Sokka decided to get Zuko's mind working on something productive.

"Besides the six they have watching me? Maybe ten on the inside wall. I've seen two at the door of the main cell block and I would guess there's probably two on the other blocks as well. Must be some inside each as well." Zuko's voice was still strained.

"Probably a few guards on the outside perimeter as well. A few cooks and general drudges. Then there's the night shift. Near as I can tell they only have two shifts. Still, running a prison must be expensive. That's a lot of people." Sokka felt despair at the remote chance of success for a daytime escape creep at the edge of his own voice.

"Running a _war_ is expensive. A hundred years of it is _crippling_. Still, as long as the armies have someone else to fight they aren't rising up against their leaders."

"_That_ sounds like a rationalization to me. Or more paranoia. In any case, it has nothing to do with our current problem."

"I thought _you _had decided that _Ling-Ling_ was going to get us out of our current problem."

Sokka bit his lip. He definitely did not like the sound of Zuko's "you" in that last comment. It was a retreat from the understanding they had struggled so hard to build. Without it, Sokka was afraid they would return to hate. And that way surely meant death for both of them.

* * *

"So. Everything okay?"

"Yeah. S'fine." Zuko hesitated. "She wants to give me a bath."

Sokka choked.

Zuko refused to say anything more. Sokka did not press him, though his imagination ran rampant with questions he wanted to ask. Zuko's face closed down and Sokka felt a gulf had opened between the two cells that had not existed in the morning.

The whole situation had gotten out of hand, he concluded. Ling-Ling was a creature beyond his understanding. Sokka did not like it at all when things went beyond his understanding. This clearly included all the bending arts, magic in general – such as consideration of luck and fortune telling, of course – and _definitely_ ugly girls who seemed perfectly capable of moving grown men and boys, in significant numbers, to actions that made no sense to any reasonable onlooker.

She was clearly very dangerous.

The door hinges got a very thorough workout that night.


	14. Chapter 14

_A/N: Over the course of writing this, the character of Ling-Ling grew from a sort of _deus ex machine_ (that original "get out of jail free" card, into something more interesting, at least to me. I have no expectation of Zuko or Sokka ever figuring her out, but I think I finally did._

_Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…_

**Chapter 14**

The world has rarely been generous in the roles available to women, regardless of century or culture. Accidents of birth may decide the difference between wife, consort, or harlot. Gradations in fairness of form could rule out all but the last for some. Nurse, cook or drudge, invisible beyond the services they provide, fill out the ranks. In any case, too great an allotment of intellect was unlikely to bring much joy, regardless of role. For the girl-child born to a family of modest rank or substance, with no beauty to recommend her, there may be no role at all.

History does not often record the accommodations the intelligent, ugly girls of modest standing make to their aspirations, but it would be foolish to assume they would simply acquiesce to empty lives. Or that history owes nothing to them.

And _this_ was another of Zuko's life lessons. As all his lessons seemed to be, he found it extremely unsettling. Not exactly…unpleasant, but definitely _not_ comfortable. He had the distinct impression that he was experiencing a bizarre mingling of revenge and genuine tenderness in Ling-Ling's caresses. Her touch was soft, firm, and definitely knowledgeable. How many had there been before him? How had it started? Had she always been the one in control? And how would he reconcile his own response?

He honestly didn't know if he felt relief or frustration when she did not unfetter him.

He could have stopped her, if not by word or look, certainly he still had his breath of fire. But he didn't try. This was part of the deal. And if she helped them, well, surely it was right that she exact her payment. He was a man of honor. He did his best to keep his promises.

But nothing was as he expected it to be.

* * *

"Damn it! How long is she going to drag this out?" Sokka had not envisioned much opportunity for intimate exchanges when he first suggested to Zuko that he take advantage of Ling-Ling's apparent attraction to him. But then, he had not reckoned with her emergence as a master of manipulation either.

"We can hope she doesn't intend to take it up to my execution and then abandon me, I guess," Zuko's tone suggested that he believed this to be a definite possibility.

"Aagh, she wouldn't. We _know_ she's helped others escape – why shouldn't she help _you_?"

"We're making it more difficult by bringing _you_ into it," Zuko reminded him.

"Then take me out," Sokka growled. "She can't be _sure_ I'll raise hell… I know. We'll start acting friendly. You don't rat on friends."

He was pacing. He had almost completely lost the air of easy acceptance that had so enraged Zuko a few short weeks ago. Now Zuko missed it.

"And you _don't _leave friends behind," Zuko said wearily. "Stop stewing. This was always the risk. You said so yourself."

"I don't _do_ well with guilt. I avoid it whenever possible."

"A little late _now_ to be worrying about it."

"I'm not. In any case, it won't come to that," Sokka forced himself to stop pacing. "No one is going to be executed. Zuko, _you _need to start getting concrete details from her as to her plan. We are _not_ going to wait around."

Zuko smiled. Good. Sokka was thinking again, and giving him something to do that would require his active participation and concentration. He desperately wanted something different to concentrate on!

"The ideal time would probably be a few hours before dawn," said Sokka. "The guards on duty will be thinking of their beds and no one else will be stirring. Ling-Ling is always the first one in here in the mornings. Even then, for some reason she doesn't bring our breakfast until a good hour after sunrise."

"Right. She'll _have_ to raise the alarm then. That would give us a good couple hours' head-start before they send out search-parties. We'll need as much lead time as we can get," Zuko agreed. "But any earlier and the guards will be more alert, and there's the chance of running into night revelers. Although in this area maybe that won't be an issue."

"I don't know. If _I_ lived near a prison I would probably spend a _lot_ of time carousing to try to forget about it. Of course, if _I_ lived under the Fire Nation at all I would probably be _consistently_ drunk, or just _kill_ myself."

"Sokka, if _you_ lived under the Fire Nation we would want to keep you drunk just to _shut_ you up." Zuko pictured his father's officials trying to find ways to deal with the Water Tribe peasant short of killing him. He decided that Sokka would have been doomed even had he not followed the Avatar.

"Good thing for my health I _don't_ plan to live under the Fire Nation then."

"Uh. You _have_ noticed that the Fire Nation doesn't plan on it either, haven't you?"

"Now see? Even when we agree we _can't _agree. They want to kill me and _I _just want to leave."

"I can't believe we are even talking about it."

The door rattled at that point, signaling the arrival of Zuko's escort for his morning trip to the yard.

* * *

Either the bones had finally collapsed or his head was getting harder. Or maybe they weren't striking as hard. All things considered, this last was certainly a possibility. In any case, the obligatory blow to Zuko's head hardly fazed him as a second guard bent to release his wrist shackles. For appearance's sake, he bowed his head and stumbled as he was dragged to his feet, but he managed to catch Sokka's eye as he passed his cell. He wanted Sokka to know that even now he was not incapacitated.

At the yard's far point his guards stepped back, allowing him room to move. Each held weapons at ready – even now no one trusted him not to fire-bend – _especially_ now, with execution eminent. But they did not interfere as he moved through his stances, his body falling into a natural rhythm and grace, without thought or conscious direction.

He would never understand it. Never know why his life had to be so damned hard! He knew he wasn't stupid. He knew how to work and oh! he knew _all_ about disciplining his mind and body to achieving a goal. So, he wasn't brilliant, but his tutors had never been actually disappointed in him. And, in any _other_ environment, his progress at 'bending would have been _more_ than acceptable.

But he was _prince _of fire. He was expected to be _exceptional_. He knew he was good – he was better than good! But his birth had almost killed his mother, and he was _lucky_ to be alive.

His sister – even girl that she was – had flowed from their mother's womb with ease, and that ease had been with her in everything since. And she _excelled_ her brother at every step.

Ah, he _hated_ girls.

He had been betrothed to some Fire Nation diplomat's daughter – he had only the vaguest memory of her, but she was his sister's friend. And _that_ was enough to close his heart without thinking. It wouldn't have mattered. There would always have been the seraglio.

He had always assumed he would control his passions, choose his partners, and determine his pleasures. It was, after all, a man's prerogative and, as Fire Lord, he would have had the ultimate prerogative.

How humiliating for a girl to yet again take the prerogative away from him. He could not deny her. Honor required otherwise and, his soul admitted, Ling-Ling had the skill to command his body's acceptance of her will… He tried to close his memory off in the interests of more important exertions.

His guards watched, enthralled with a performance beyond their ken. Zuko's control was exquisite. Yet he could not prevent the tell-tale whispers of smoke that trailed from his limbs and from his breath. Luckily, in the prevailing haze, these whispers disappeared like a disappointed sigh.

* * *

Given the fact that the backup plan was still problematic - did he really think between the two of them they could overpower not just the guards actually with Zuko but others stationed around the prison who would be drawn to the fracas - Sokka also thought about Ling-Ling's plan.

It wasn't enough for her to leave the keys with Zuko. He didn't have enough play in his chains for one hand – or even his teeth – to reach the lock cuffing his other wrist. And he couldn't bend his hand sufficiently to manage the lock on that wrist.

The obvious answer was for her to leave the keys with Sokka, if she wasn't prepared to free him herself. But they weren't yet ready to reveal to Ling-Ling that Sokka was even aware of the possibility of escape. After all, Ling-Ling had not yet raised the option of including Sokka in her plan, despite Zuko's hints regarding his neighbor's potential as a trouble-maker. He did not push it. Despite his earlier comments, Sokka was far from trusting her with the knowledge that he and Zuko were working together. It would put them both completely at her mercy, and he didn't like it.

He also didn't like it that Zuko seemed to have lost some of his wariness regarding Ling-Ling.

* * *

He sluiced the last of his water jug over his face and through his hair. The sides and back itched where hair filled in areas he had not been able to shave in weeks. He suspected from similar irritation beneath his nose and across his chin, and from the faint shadow gracing his neighbor's visage, that adolescence was visiting both of them with yet more reminders as to the onset of adulthood.

And what would he be willing to do for a bath? Sokka shook himself. He would not go there, even in his mind.

"Will you go home after, if you can?" Zuko asked. He didn't want to think about Ling-Ling, the prison, or anything about himself. Sokka had been drumming his fingertips, knuckles and palms on the wall in a complicated rhythm Zuko guessed harkened from the Water Tribe. The metal wall yielded different tonal values that Sokka had mapped out in the days before Zuko started talking to him.

"I have to, don't I," Sokka didn't pause in his drumming. Zuko didn't expect him to. "Someone should be taking care of my village, and I don't know if any of the other men will be returning." He didn't voice the reality that those men were fighting against Zuko's people. That almost certainly some, at least, were already dead.

"But you left them on their own already. You _must_ have assumed they could take care of themselves."

"That was different. I didn't think we'd be gone that long. We _had_ to go help Aang, after what he'd done for the village. And then… we had to keep helping him. He _needs_ us. And, I guess… he's more important than anyone else."

"I wonder if you're just kidding yourself. You were just looking for an excuse to leave," Zuko mused, picturing again the harsh landscape of Sokka's homeland. "I mean, what is there for you to do there?"

"Hunt, fish, cure meat and tan hides, build and repair boats, ice walls and tents, carve bone and haggle with traders for things we can't get at home and need. Always work to do. For fun, there's sailing, skating, ice-climbing, sledding and boarding down glaciers. Music and story-telling. Harassing my sister and the young kids. It's not a bad life, really. It's all I ever asked for," Sokka shrugged. "May not seem like much to you, but you knew where you stood, who you could trust, and that you were loved." He looked pointedly at Zuko, bringing his cadence to a sudden stop.

Zuko met his gaze, refusing to rise to the bait. "I don't believe it. You must have wanted more."

"Nope. Always more to learn. Can _you_ navigate by the stars, Zuko? Do _you_ know when the ice is rotten or how to tell when the krill are running? Do _you_ understand whale-song?" He smiled. "Don't get me wrong. There's a lot to be said for seeing the world. And there are – people – I wouldn't have missed knowing for anything. But, yeah, I want to go home."

Zuko remained silent. Sokka took up another beat, then paused a moment.

"Not enough to do just anything to get there, though." His hands resumed their beat.


	15. Chapter 15

_A/N: The concensus appears to favor longer chapters over shorter, so those of you who've read this elsewhere may notice I'm doing some consolidation of the chapters._

_Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…_

* * *

**Chapter 15**

"There is a reason they keep a man on guard out there," Sokka gestured towards the door at the end of the corridor. "It would look very bad indeed if they hadn't tightened up on security after the last escape."

"_She_ says that there's a false wall over there, behind the plating." With his chin, Zuko indicated the opposite wall through the bars of his cell door.

"Now, _why_ would there be a false wall in a prison? And _when_ did she say this?" Sokka frowned, his eyes searching for some sign of irregularity in the wall. He walked over to the corner of his cell nearest the area in question.

"After dinner, when you were out on your 'walk'. She wants to make sure you don't hear."

"Huh. So much for romance." He grunted. "So, what _else_ does she say?"

Zuko's face took on a faint blush. The demure, timid prison wench had proven herself remarkably outspoken as to her expectations of Zuko, but he had no intention of sharing _that_ with Sokka. The time she spent alone with him was limited in duration, yet she seemed to know _exactly_ how to make it sufficient for her needs. She also had no objection to finding the time to explain to him, with remarkable clarity, how she planned for him to escape.

"The angle of the building shields that side from observation by the rest of the yard or the other buildings. Even up on the perimeter wall you wouldn't be able to see anyone come out. I think she's right."

"Yeah, I think so too. We'll check it out tomorrow. So, what about the perimeter wall?" Sokka was perfectly willing to take advantage of Ling-Ling's experience.

"There's a porter's gate on that side that is never used. She says the key was lost years ago." Zuko shook his head at the gross potential for security breaches in this prison.

"Meaning she took it and made sure no new keys were ever made. I just can't believe this place was originally intended as a prison, it just doesn't make sense." Sokka's thoughts paralleled Zuko's own. "I don't suppose you could make the torch burn a little brighter, could you? Or even add some light of your own from that angle?"

"I'll try… Any better? Right. I know what you mean. The Earth Kingdom builders must have been crazy." Zuko paused. "The gate's a heavy, solid wood that is also barred on the far side in case of a riot. I haven't seen it but from what she described I could probably burn through it fairly quickly. At least, I _think_ I could."

"Yet another key to worry about. I assume she would leave it with you and make sure the gate was unbarred, although it remains to be seen just how she would accomplish that! So, we leave it in the lock and she retrieves it first thing. That would leave her free to use it again in the future. On the other hand, if you blast through it the question of that particular missing key never comes up, but she has to arrange for the new key and any copies to be lost again," He was thinking aloud as he continued to scan the wall.

"I'd say use the key, and arrange for some scuff marks on the wall to make it look like we went over the top. Better for her, easier and faster for us."

"Uh-huh. Easy enough to do. Although… if the gate opens inward it might leave drag marks we can't blot out. And… weapons?" Ah. He thought he had finally spotted it, a faint seam at much less than full height, which would be ignored by anyone looking for a full-sized opening. He crouched down to get a better look.

"It seems _your_ things are in the warden's office – he hasn't seen anything like the boomerang before, and your knife and club are sufficiently, uh, unusual, to catch his interest. Otherwise, we should find anything we need in the armory. It isn't locked."

"I'm guessing the word she used was 'primitive'," Sokka studied the wall for some kind of release mechanism, the rest of his brain still on 'automatic'.

"Have you ever been in a battle with non-benders from the Water Tribes, besides that fiasco at my home, Zuko? We can't call one man against a warship a battle, right? Anyway, I love the boomerang, but the Tribes also have a kind of sling for throwing short spears – your people would find it _very_ primitive, I'm sure. One man with an _at-atl_ - this sling - can throw a spear over 200 yards with enough force to pierce a rhino's hide and kill it. Your average guy doesn't have a prayer, even in armor. It takes only seconds to load and fire, and can be reloaded and fired again repeatedly, as long as the man's arm doesn't tire. Easy to make, and spears are cheap and easy to get or produce. Training doesn't even take that long. Some of the little kids back home were already starting to learn. As weapons go, it's damned effective…. Wait a minute." Something had finally clicked.

Sokka turned to look at Zuko, who had been following Sokka's lecture with interest. "Why were you talking about _my _weapons?"

Zuko smirked. "I wondered when you would catch on. Tell me, Sokka, do you often talk about one thing while thinking about something totally different? You're actually very, very good at it. You would do _so _well at court!"

"Tell me, Zuko," Sokka mimicked, "Were you born annoying or did you have to work at it? Because you're very, very good at it. But seriously, this means she thinks it makes sense to take _me_ along after all?"

The other boy shifted his shoulders in what was probably a shrug.

"You're friends with the _Avatar_. I think if it weren't for _that_ she would happily slit your gullet. But, she's hedging her bets. If the Avatar comes out on top in this war and _she_ saved his friend, whatever else she's done will be forgiven. Or so she thinks." Suko's smile turned grim. "Sokka, she talks about _you_ now. I mean, it's almost obsessive and definitely a bit weird. Even for Ling-Ling. I'm guessing _I'm_ just a temporary blip on her imagination. But you, you're a canker in her side, a burr she can't shake. That girl's attracted to danger and you mean danger to her now."

"Doesn't matter," Sokka mumbled. He wouldn't think about it. "I want my things. We gotta think of a way to get them moved to a more accessible location."

Great. Now he had two more things to think about, and he still didn't know if Zuko's affair with Ling-Ling was going cause more problems than it solved.

* * *

The truth of Zuko's observation exhibited itself with breakfast. The two trays were identical. Ling-Ling opened the hatch in the front wall's bars to Sokka's cell to shove in his tray, as usual.

He moved forward, as usual, to pick it up from the floor before she finished. Sokka was always hungry, a by-product of his age and a lifetime of perceived semi-deprivation.

But she let her hand linger on the edge of the tray, and as he pulled it towards himself there was resistance. Surprised, he looked up, and caught her eyes upon him. He paused less than an instant, and then let an expression of bland mockery washed across his features. Neither said a word as she released his tray and moved on to Zuko's cell.

The scene was brief but unmistakable, and Ling-Ling did nothing to hide it from Zuko.

* * *

Despite his own discomfort with her, Zuko could not help a flare of anger at her attention to Sokka. His mind whiplashed between the advisability of allowing her to see his reaction and concealing it. Now his anger seethed at Sokka as well. He had suggested that Ling-Ling was intrigued by Sokka just the night before, and he had been ignored. Of course, it had not occurred to him that she would act on this interest so quickly and so blatantly! Now he had to decide whether or not to acknowledge her actions on his own.

The prince in him decided the issue. Although, perhaps, it could just as easily have been the lonely boy.

He was surly, and responded to her inquiries regarding his needs with disdain. She fed him under an air of unusual tension. The meal ended as Ling-Ling departed, trays in hand.

"What is your problem?"

"My problem? I have no problem."

"Right. And _I'm_ scheduled to play air-ball with Aang next week and am favored to win."

"_No_ one favors you to make it across the yard without tripping."

"Ah shit. I really _thought_ I was gonna collect on this one. So. Did _you _bet against me?"

Zuko's anger was momentarily diverted. Sokka was incorrigible. Even if he wasn't able to kill anyone on his way to his execution, Zuko had no doubt that that he had prepared an appropriately insolent speech for the block. He also suspected that Sokka had laid bets against himself, probably naming Zuko as beneficiary, even if he _was _supposed to die first. It would be _so_ like Sokka. As if anyone had a prayer of collecting anyway.

"What was that all about, anyway?" It was Zuko's turn to probe.

"You tell me. Maybe making sure that we don't unite against her?"

"Maybe. Or as I said before. She's moving in on you."

"That would make _no _sense. She could play two guys at once if they didn't know about each other, but we are practically living on top of each other! _How_ would she play this?"

Zuko shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe she doesn't care. Maybe she thinks when I die you'll seek her out in desperation."

"There's no _time_. And why would_ I_ do such a thing if I knew it didn't do _you_ any good?

"Maybe," and here Zuko blushed a deep crimson. "Maybe she thinks you'll believe I got enough out of it anyway for you to try your hand."

"Faagh! Okay. We're _done _with that topic," Sokka walked away to the other side of the cell.

Zuko said nothing.

* * *

"Okay. If I were Ling-Ling what would I do?" Sokka had really hoped he wouldn't have to deal with this at all. He was annoyed.

"How the hell would I know? As if anyone could figure out a female brain!"

"I don't get it. I just _don't_ get it! You have her panting so hard to be alone with you that she arranges for me to go out for walkies! And then, with her hot breath whispering in your ear how she'll save you from death, _suddenly_ she changes her mind and wants _me_ to stand in?" Sokka felt his control on his temper disappear.

"How _could_ you fuck up something so simple? You were supposed to _make nice_ with the girl. But leave it to _you _to take things too far. Next thing we know, you're promising her fiery nights of passion. Did you flake out or something? Why is she looking to _me_ now? What the hell did you do?"

"Oh, no you don't. You are _not _putting this on _me_," Zuko snarled back. "It's not _like_ that! You have no idea, none! I've given her _everything_ she asked for, a _lot_ more than I ever said I would. Anyway, _you're _the one who said to make her _want _to help us. What was I supposed to do?" The injustice of Sokka's accusation, combined with Ling-Ling's – he could think of no other word than _betrayal_ – reignited Zuko's own ire. He glared at Sokka, who returned his stare.

A fragile construction of trust and understanding, painstakingly erected over the past weeks, threatened to crumble beneath the weight of their frustration.

* * *

"Ah, never mind. You're right. She's a lunatic." Sokka gathered himself together. "Sorry, man. This whole thing sucks and it just doesn't seem to be getting any better."

"Well, one way or another it will all be over soon." The bitter note was back in Zuko's voice.

"Okay. Okay! There's gotta be a way we can _use_ this." Sokka paused, "What is she trying to _do?_ What makes more sense? Risk pissing you off by flirting with me? Is she so _sure _of you she thinks she can play _me_ too? Or, is she bored already? …Uh, Zuko, chime in anytime here. After all, presumably you know her pretty well by now. You must have _some_ sense of, well, whether or not she's…happy… with how things are going."

"Do we _really_ have to talk about this?"

Sokka didn't reply.

"You simply have no idea of the depths of my hatred for you. You have robbed me of the last dram of dignity I had left."

"I _said_ I was sorry," Sokka sighed heavily and collapsed on his sleeping mat, eyes on the far wall. "I don't blame you for hating me. I should have done this myself."

"I told you before. I can do _anything_ I have to. Don't go all soft on me, peasant, or worry about regrets. Besides, what makes you think you could have done it _better_ yourself?" Zuko preferred to see Sokka angry or cocky to morose or worried. The latter scared him.

"I didn't say I could." Sokka's brows rose in inquiry. "'Course, I think I probably _could_ have done it without ending up some kind of… of sex slave." This last came out as a drawl as Sokka sensed that they had somehow come back on track.

"_Who'_s the slave? She comes to _me,_ Sokka."

"As if you had a choice?"

"Doesn't matter. She's _still _coming back," Zuko asserted. "And I _don't _think she's bored."

He paused, but this time for thought, not effect. "All right. This is what I think. She's heady with her own success, so yeah, she's gotten greedy. Not because she's bored, but because everything is going so well for her. Think about it. She's younger than me, but she's been doing this for years! I don't want to even think how it might have started, or when. But anyway, she's gotten away with it. So who knows what else she thinks she can get away with." He paused again to think some more.

"It is a game with her. It makes her feel powerful. She's a control freak," Zuko shuddered.

"What do _you_ think we should do?" Sokka asked. He hesitated to suggest anything himself. Zuko was right; he had gotten them into this predicament.

"I think," Zuko said thoughtfully, "You have the right idea. We use it. She's trying to play us. So… we play her instead. After all, that was the whole idea in the first place."

Zuko smiled. Sokka remembered seeing a hint of that smile during the months Zuko had hunted them so successfully. He felt a bit ambivalent about that smile's reappearance.

"You've been acting like a low-life, smart-mouthed prick to her, and she's _fascinated _by it. Fine, keep it up. Let's see what she does with it. Meanwhile, we don't want to lose our chance at her getting us out of here, so I keep up _my _role. But she can hardly blame me for being angry if she flirts with you, so let her do… _something_ to earn back my affection. Yeah. That's what I think."

Sokka smiled. "Spoken like a true prince. Low-life, smart-mouthed prick it is. But you know I'll have to work at it – it's just _so_ far from my natural character. Hey, Zuko?"

"What?"

"So. Just how bad is it, having to be nice to Ling-Ling, anyway?" He didn't think he would ever have a better chance to ask.

"Sokka, I have now learned never to underestimate a girl," He thought a moment. "But I was wrong before. Ling-Ling does have…qualities."


	16. Chapter 16

A/N: Thank you all who are still reading this, and thank you for the great reviews. This is fun to write. My favorite part is creating a character with so much impact on their lives without saying a word – kind of like never seeing Ozai's face.

Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…

* * *

**Chapter 16**

He wasn't terribly surprised to see Ling-Ling enter the cell-block after Zuko was led away for his exercise period. The cleaning materials she carried were camouflage. But then, Sokka was sure all aspects of her role as prison wench served as such.

Her back was straight as she worked, and she did not so much avoid his eyes as ignore him. He, on the other hand, took his customary stance against the wall but pointedly followed her every move with his own gaze. He kept his expression bland.

He admired her skill at playing this game. He hoped he could still beat her.

She never even entered his cell.

But as she left she faced him. There was no change of expression – just a slight tilt of her head – and her eyes didn't quite meet his. He smiled, and dipped an exaggerated bow her way. Her lip twitched, and she swept out the door.

And Sokka broke into a sweat.

* * *

The oppressive heat weighed like lead on everyone. The two boys in the state cells were lucky; in the common blocks body heat, humidity, and general hopelessness combined with resentment and overcrowding to spark fights among the inmates and increased edginess among the guards. Bones were broken and blood spilled, and little effort was wasted on medical attention.

A storm was brewing.

Sokka was singing again. Oh, he kept the volume low, and Zuko couldn't make out the words, but he was definitely singing. If he wasn't sleeping – and he slept a lot – Sokka was either exercising, drumming on the wall or floor, singing, or talking to him. All that nervous energy grated on Zuko's nerves.

"Can't you ever be still?" He finally asked.

"What do you mean, I'm still lots." Sokka sounded genuinely surprised.

"Yeah, when you're comatose."

A period of silence followed from the next cell. Zuko started mentally counting. Wait for it.

"Well, if _you_ talked more I wouldn't have to." That Sokka found this to be a perfectly reasonable response did not surprise Zuko at all.

"It's not just the talking, you know. You sing."

"You gotta problem with singing?" _Now _Sokka was offended.

"Only with yours." Zuko said, pleasantly enough. With, it must be added, a certain amount of relish.

"Fine. Let's hear the Fire Nation's finest," Sokka crossed his arms and leaned back, sulkily.

"Look around, bozo. I don't think it is possible to feel less like singing."

"Too bad. When you're bored, it can really help to pass the time." Zuko heard the… the _bounce_ return to Sokka's voice.

"Bored? You're _bored_? You want to _pass the time_? Have you forgotten what is supposed to happen after a certain amount of time has passed?" He couldn't help it, despite all his efforts, Zuko lost his control. "You've done it, haven't you. You've finally gone completely insane."

"Relax, Zuko. We're in good shape and you know it. Seriously, don't you like music?"

Zuko gave up. He had brought the subject up, so he supposed it was only fair to answer the question. "Music's okay, I guess. I used to like listening a lot, actually. These last years, though, it just seems wrong for music to even exist."

"Huh. I suppose so. It helps, though, you know. It's like love. Even when things are awful, thinking about the ones you love can help a lot. Music is the same way. You gotta have _something_ to help you keep going." It felt odd to Sokka to talk about these things. He never had before. Music was a part of life, as important as eating, sleeping, and, yes, loving. You didn't have to talk about it; you just knew it was so. He also wasn't used to not exploiting the opportunity to goad Zuko, but somehow, he welcomed an opportunity for talk that, well, wasn't aimed at achieving some goal. Or, at least, not some obvious goal.

"What do _you_ know of love, Sokka?" Zuko mused, "I mean, besides this family of yours."

"Oh, well," Sokka blushed. He wasn't sure he wanted to talk about Yue at all, especially not to Zuko. "You know, what anyone knows, of course."

"What have I told you about lying, Sokka? You might be a good actor, but you can't lie for shit."

"I'm not lying. I know what everyone knows," Now Sokka grew mulish. He was tired of Zuko's superior attitude. "Oh, sorry. I forgot that love doesn't _translate_ in the Fire Nation. You'd _eat_ your young if someone hadn't figured out you'd all go extinct."

"Your mouth truly will kill you, one of these days," Zuko warned. Sokka's comment hit just a little too close to home.

"Right. Your complaint at the beginning of all this. Tell you what, you just go back to navel-gazing while I explore the potential of crossing an Earth Kingdom ballad with a Water Tribe pavane. It shouldn't work, but I have high hopes."

Zuko resigned himself to spending the rest of the morning not quite listening to Sokka's quiet tenor, occasionally cracking, but actually quite pleasing. Not that he would ever admit it.

* * *

The guard that accompanied Ling-Ling seemed unhappy with his burden; a couple of wide, shallow bowls and two large pitchers precariously balanced in both arms. Her own arms held their lunch trays, and she directed the guard to leave after depositing his load on the corridor floor.

She left Sokka's tray on the floor of his cell without incident, and proceeded to give Zuko her full attention. He refused to meet her eyes or respond to her any more than required as she gave him his meal.

Sokka feigned absorption in his own food, but inwardly wondered how much of Zuko's spleen at Ling-Ling was a result of wounded pride, deliberate guile, or annoyance at Sokka himself. All that mattered, of course, was how Ling-Ling responded.

Apparently, she had anticipated Zuko's ire. She called the guard back in, unlocked Sokka's cell door and deposited one of the bowls and pitchers just inside the door. Dismissing the guard again, she brought the other pitcher and bowl into Zuko's cell.

She poured water into the bowl, pulled a soft cloth from somewhere on her person, and proceeded to wash Zuko's face and neck, murmuring to him about the sufferings of the other inmates from the heat, and the concerns of the guards about the possibilities of an uncontrollable revolt.

She rinsed the cloth in the cool water, and looked over at Sokka, who had watched the whole proceedings with interest. She looked at the pitcher in his cell, and then back at him. Sokka followed her eyes. Hell, he could take a hint.

There was no corresponding cloth there, but he picked up the pitcher, pleased with its heft and the correspondingly large quantity of water it held, and filled the bowl. Kneeling, he made a noisy show of splashing water over himself. It was easy to ignore the cell next door in the simple pleasure of removing weeks of accumulated sweat and grime. As baths went, it was hardly adequate. But all things considered, it was lovely indeed.

Sokka grinned. All it had cost him was a smile.

* * *

Zuko didn't forgive. It didn't matter that he had anticipated the fault, or that its expression was mild. It didn't even matter that he didn't honestly give a damn about this girl. He had shown her favor and allowed her intimacy unprecedented. And it wasn't enough for her. No amount of perfumed water, no sweet caresses or subtle flattery would erase the fury he felt at her betrayal.

Zuko did not have the introspection, despite his years of meditation, to realize that Ling-Ling's fascination for Sokka - the one person he himself desperately wanted to rise above - hurt him _more_ than her apparent complacency regarding himself.

Which was just as well. If Ling-Ling's interest in Sokka ensured her assistance in getting them both out of prison, some concession would have be made to that interest, and he knew it. His pride be damned.

So he allowed her to believe he had been won over. He permitted those sweet caresses, and yielded himself to her touch, but he also allowed her to see the core of hardness in a prince's displeasure.

And she wondered yet again at the forces that had formed this strange young man, leaving him a counter on her game board, the ultimate play at her hand, and yet somehow still beyond her.

* * *

It was that time of day colors are at their sharpest, the light carving contrasts and planes otherwise unnoticed, even in a haze-clouded sky. At the Pole, during the season of the midnight sun, you could savor this light for weeks at a time, which only served to heighten the sense of suspended time. Here in the Earth Kingdom, the illusion was no less convincing, if shorter-lived.

As Sokka hobbled his way across the yard, his eyes took in the extra men on the perimeter wall, and the palpable air of tension of those men in the yard itself. Although he had only been doing this a few days, he was sure the presence of other inmates at this hour was an anomaly. He was quick to attribute it, and the excess guards, to Ling-Ling's words regarding the heat-crazed restlessness of the general population. He wondered if she had meant to warn them somehow, or provide them with fodder for their escape.

For himself, he couldn't help but feel that the extra men on guard outweighed any benefit of the confusion that increased tensions generated. Of course, he still thought in terms of trying an escape without benefit of Ling-Ling's many keys and stratagems.

But perhaps, he thought again, _that _was her point as well.

As his cuffs were removed from ankles and wrists, Sokka held still. His body remembered the pains of capture, and Zuko's battered and bruised head bore testament every day to the Fire Nation's resolve against resistance in any form. Sokka was not a slow learner.

His history of compliance was well-noted, and aside from the warden's blows and random lashings out of the guards, Sokka experienced the benefits of a man considered a model prisoner. He had enhanced these with his willingness to gamble with the guards, always on credit earned from the previous wager. He lost with wit and style, won with charm and modesty, and was, all in all, a popular prisoner.

Zuko, although equally compliant, was watched more closely. While the guards did not smile on his watch, they appreciated their charge's grace and quiet demeanor. Many wondered what one of their own, and such a young one, had done to merit death. His identity remained a secret.

In short, the two state prisoners were respected, accepted, and even, perhaps, pitied for their inevitable fates.

Of course, this did not change any soldier's perfect acceptance of the importance that these prisoners should, in fact, be executed.

* * *

"The sooner we leave, the better," Sokka said.

"No shit, what gave you your first clue?"

"No, you idiot. Things have _changed_. You heard Ling-Ling."

"I heard what she wanted me to hear. Did you hear something different?"

"Not exactly. But what she said: The prison's a powder-keg,"

"Wouldn't that be good for us?" Zuko was perplexed.

Sokka paused, considering how far the prince had come. "Sure, if we could control when it would blow, it would be great. But we don't know that, do we?"

"But can't we still ride the wave when it does happen?"

It was kind of fun to hear Zuko talk about "riding waves", ignorant as he likely was of the wild forces of nature such an experiment would expose him to. Sokka spent a millisecond imagining Zuko's reaction to the reality he invoked.

"We could, if we could get out of these damned cells in time. Oh, and if _you_ weren't chained to the friggin' wall."

"So? She'll have given us the keys. What's the problem?" Zuko asked. He didn't understand how Sokka's afternoon complacency should have changed. After all, he knew far better than Sokka the strength of what they were up against. And from what he had read of the one prison break the younger boy had taken part in, a break by the general population should prove at worst a distraction that would aid them. What gecko-fly had crawled up the other boy's butt?

"Will she? When do you think _that _is gonna happen?"

"I would guess any time now. By the way, she's going to have _your _weapons moved to storage in the armory," Zuko was sure Sokka would appreciate this particular nugget of information.

"Really? How did you pull that one off?" Sokka was impressed and momentarily distracted from his other worries.

Zuko shrugged, "I simply said that if I was going to have to _rely _on you at all I wanted you to have weapons you would know how to use, and… that I figured you were too dumb to manage with ours."

"Ha. Like you have anything _special._ And you don't think it looks suspicious that you would trust me _not_ to kill you if I were armed?"

"As if you could. No, Sokka, no one really considers you much of a threat when it comes to a fight," Zuko admitted. He wondered though, about that. Sokka's weapons had, in fact, appeared to invoke some awe among the prison guards that Zuko had yet to fully understand.

"Good. Then they won't be looking for me when I bust their heads," There was nothing but grim satisfaction in Sokka's voice. He was used to being underestimated; it came with being overshadowed by the power of the Avatar and a master water-bending sister. He knew his own capabilities and knew there was a nice trail behind him of those who had learned them the hard way. If others' chose to attribute those bodies to someone else, Sokka had no problem with it. He kinda wished he could do so himself.

"Okay then. It's time to start pressing her to deliver."


	17. Chapter 17

A/N: I hate to end this, but really, I'm running out of excuses to drag it out much further. So there will only be a few more chapters after this. But hey, a sequel is in the works…

Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…

* * *

**Chapter 17**

This time when Ling-Ling returned to the cell-block in Zuko's absence Sokka was surprised. After all, she had seemed quite contrite in her attentions to Zuko after yesterday's little incident.

Sokka's nerves kicked into high alert.

He broke the silence first, thanking her for the water yesterday and the ease it had brought from the day's heat. He asked outright if she thought fire-benders suffered from the weather like the rest of them, reminding her of his role as blackmailer. Sokka was afraid to allow her the initiative, since he had no clear idea what she might do with it.

When she left, he felt mildly reassured. Her interest seemed to be in gauging the degree of Sokka's hostility to Zuko. She had also vaguely reiterated her concern regarding the general level of tension in the prison proper, and now Sokka was convinced she was trying to convey some specific warning.

Since he wasn't supposed to be aware of her plans for their escape he couldn't question her further. So his own level of unease remained high, and it wasn't aided when Zuko stumbled as he returned to his pallet. Apparently the guards had decided his exercise session had gone too well, and they had reminded him forcibly that he would be given no opportunity to revolt.

* * *

With dizziness came nausea, and Ling-Ling could not tempt him to eat the noon meal.

So Sokka asked for Zuko's portion.

"You are such a glutton," muttered Zuko. "If I didn't know better I would think you ate my food just to gross Ling-Ling out."

"You know I'm always hungry," Sokka smiled. "But it doesn't hurt to add a little repellant to the mix."

"Pig."

Sokka belched in response.

They had the afternoon to themselves. There had been no letup from yesterday's heat, and both boys blessed the thick stone walls of the cell block that insulated them, at least somewhat, from the weather outside.

They discussed which weapons they should look for in the armory, the added risk of discovery from the increase in patrols as a result of general unrest, and the advisability of sticking to the road for ease of travel as opposed to the woods for ease of hiding. Their opinions did not coincide on any single course of action, but it was remarkable the ease with which they found consensus on each point.

It did not seem to occur to either of them that, once outside the prison walls, any reason for their continued alliance would be ended.

They did not discuss a destination, though. Only how they would get away.

"Tonight or tomorrow night," Sokka said. "I really don't think we should wait any longer."

"I agree." Zuko replied. "But will Ling-Ling?"

"I can't figure out if she's trying to say to wait until the weather breaks – which of course may be too late," pondered Sokka. "Or if she thinks there is some way we can use all this unrest to our advantage."

"Like you said before, if we could control it, or knew when it would happen – if it even will happen ─ then we could use it. But we don't, so she must be warning us to wait."

"Right…" But Sokka was troubled. "You probably know better than me. This kind of weather can settle in for weeks without breaking, right? So how do people deal? When do they flip out if they can't deal?"

He thought some more.

"If we could somehow _promote _an escalation, a blowup, would it be a perfect diversion? Or would we be discovered faster? What is the answer?"

"If. _If-if-if._ Stow it, Sokka. There is no point wasting time thinking of what we could do 'if'!" Zuko admired Sokka's brain, but he had no patience for over-thinkers.

"And your idea is to just ignore the possibilities?" Zuko's tunnel-vision would, in Sokka's humble opinion, get them both killed.

And so it went. Again, it was remarkable that they came to consensus at all, let alone on every point.

* * *

The urgency in Ling-Ling's manner was sufficient to convince Zuko that Sokka was right. And there was a sorrow he had not seen before, a sweetness that did not belong in this exchange of expediency.

She confessed her concerns about Sokka's trustworthiness – he dismissed them with characteristic arrogance.

She warned him of the increased vigilance of her father's guards – he thanked her for her concern while silently filing away her admission of her real standing within the prison hierarchy.

She admitted the difficulty in separating the key to the doors in the state cell block from the rest of the blocks. There were only two copies, and one would be easily missed, unlike the many duplicate keys to the rest of the cells.

This gave Zuko pause.

And he found more difficulty than usual in losing himself in the quicksilver of her fingers and languor of her lips.

* * *

"She agrees. She will get us the keys tomorrow," Zuko hesitated. The chance that she might fail was very real, and if she did, his credibility with Sokka would be eliminated.

But if she succeeded, Sokka need never know of Zuko's doubts.

"And she confirmed that the armory has a supply of blasting jelly and black powder?" Sokka seemed unaware of Zuko's hesitation.

"Yes. But she agrees that the risk is too great. There would be no way to get a charge back into the main block and then out again through the porter's gate without being detected."

"And the chances of our making it out past the main gate are lousy even if we don't raise a ruckus. There's just too much security, thanks to the weather, of all things."

"They are zero if we delay any longer than necessary. You said yourself that an uprising in the prison might cause more problems than it would solve." Zuko was adamant. He fully agreed with Ling-Ling's assessment of the risks of a general uprising to their escape probability.

"And yet, there's a chance of freeing a lot more than just ourselves."

Sokka looked Zuko dead in the eyes. "You don't have to help. You can still get a good lead on any search for you. But I'm gonna do this."

He offered half a grin to Zuko. "It's the right thing to do."

* * *

Zuko's head was clearer with the sunrise. He would be very discreet that morning, and keep his pace slow and easy. That was okay. There were moves he had been ignoring because they required more concentration than muscle control – using his muscles had been what this freedom of movement had been about to him - and to the uninitiated eye such movements lacked flair and power. Zuko would present himself as thoroughly cowed, for he needed to be at his best tonight.

Appearances. It seemed no matter what his role in life the focus was always on _appearance._ Be it as prince or prisoner. Leader or fugitive. There was little freedom from the tyrant of meeting others' expectations. He had often wondered if the young Avatar felt as oppressed by this tyrant as he did. Now he found himself wondering if anyone was free.

In the next cell Sokka was singing again as he waited for breakfast, singing yet another song Zuko had never heard before. Sokka played different roles as well, and seemed to slip from one to another with practiced ease. He was neither fool nor coward, nor was he the fearless warrior ready to lay down his life for a cause, yet he could don the garb of any of these and none would be the wiser. What was Sokka when he was not meeting expectations?

Equally mysterious, of course, was the warden's ugly daughter. Presumably, she could command every man in this compound; yet she brought their meals and cleared their cells of filth with her own hands. Hands that knew more about how to please him than Zuko had known himself. How many shells of others' expectations did she hide herself within?

After today, it wouldn't matter to him. Not that it did anyway.

* * *

Sokka admitted to himself that he would like to be considered a hero. Who wouldn't? But he wasn't hero material. That was Aang's job. Still, he also knew that once he had figured out what he was supposed to do, he couldn't walk away from it. No matter how many times he told himself that his job was to look out for Aang and Katara, and he couldn't do that as long as he was stuck in this stupid hell-hole, he also couldn't walk away from a chance to free the other prisoners. And if it meant knocking some Fire Nation heads together, all the better.

They had done it before, in freeing the earth-benders from the sea citadel prison. Of course, the success of that venture had rested on Aang and the earth-benders themselves. This time there would be no Avatar, no stirring words from Katara to rouse the inmates to revolt, and no love-sick boy out to prove himself to her and his father.

But Sokka believed the necessary ingredients were here as well. A poorly run facility, guards whose stupidity and near apathy countered their brutality, and a population already resentful, on edge, and ready for violence. Best of all, there would be all those lovely combustibles to play with. He thought of Chey, the Fire Nation deserter with explosives expertise with whom he had grown friendly all those months ago, fondly.

He wondered what Ling-Ling would think in the aftermath. Would she regret the part she played in this endgame? Would she be able to hide her role, pick up the pieces and approach some future desperate soul to play her game?

He no longer felt guilty for forcing Zuko into playing the desperate soul. He even wondered if perhaps Zuko had gained more than he paid for his chance at freedom. But that was Zuko's to determine.

* * *

This time when Ling-Ling dismissed the guard after removing the waste vessels from his cell and locking the door behind her, he actually confronted her.

It was his turn to pretend to question Zuko's willingness to include him in the escape plan, to question her willingness to risk so much, only to lose her lover on his escape. He was cruel and disbelieving in his questions, mocking her motives and intentions, as any good blackmailer would do. She was cold and resentful in response. And yet…

It was so subtle Sokka doubted his own senses. If Zuko himself hadn't suggested it, if she hadn't hesitated that one time in loosing her hold on his meal tray, if she hadn't so carefully _avoided _him...

He kicked himself for reading too much into her words, her manner, her lack of anything that might be construed as questionable. But his skin crawled.

Sokka's instincts. Stupid fuckin' instincts.

"Get out. What possible good could she get out of seducing you now?" Zuko dismissed his worries.

"Exactly! Unless she intends to betray you. But again, why would I trust her then? And I've got what, a day or two after you're scheduled to die? Like _that's_ gonna be worth her time?" Sokka fretted. "It just doesn't make sense. What is she up to?"

"Haven't we gone over this already? She's looking ahead, like I said before. If the Avatar succeeds in defeating my father, she thinks she'll have a chance to salvage her chances with you. You'll _owe_ her," Zuko practically spat.

Sokka breathed deeply. This was stupid. On all kinds of levels. All that mattered was whether or not she would come through _now_, and would they be prepared if she did not. Zuko was right; he was overthinking.

"Okay, fine. That actually makes some sense. It wouldn't have to mess up anything." Of course, it could all be just another _game_ to her, practice for… next time. Sokka refused to think of that.

* * *

"I've told you, he's a goofy kid. In a strangely powerful, kick-ass Avatar kind of way, of course. But he's still just a goofy kid," Sokka said in answer to Zuko's query. "Do we really have to go over _this_ again? And no, he's not interested in wiping out the Fire Nation. Unfortunately." He did not avoid infusing a note of regret, here.

"Does it really matter?"

And here he _tried _to catch Zuko's eye.

"A child. Why should anyone care about a child?" Was Zuko really asking about himself, with the shadow of a death's-head behind him?

"I suppose, if you were his father, or uncle or brother, you might find reason to care, Avatar or not." Satisfaction oozed from every pore. Sokka smirked, knowing he could still twist the knife.

Zuko merely glared.

And for Sokka, any thread that he could use to cling to Aang was yet another bond to his family, to Katara and his father. So Zuko could not intimidate him. When it came right down to it, it was hard to imagine just what would be sufficient to intimidate Sokka at this point.

There was no point worrying about that particular mystery.


	18. Chapter 18

_A/N: What we've all been waiting for – the GREAT ESCAPE! Yes, finally I'm going to get them both out of their cells at the same time. What? Do you mean some of you actually doubted that Ling-Ling would come through? Oh ye of little faith! Surely Zuko's charms would have been enough to convince her, even if she hadn't initially meant to…_

Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…

* * *

**Chapter 18**

With the cell windows facing the yard and visible to the guards on the perimeter wall, they had decided not to risk Zuko lighting the torches. The hour was well advanced towards morning, and there would be no excuse for light from their cells.

But there was sufficient moonlight to provide defining shadows, and Sokka wouldn't have been able to see the lock on his cell door from inside anyway. He guided the key by touch, and was rewarded when it slipped in and turned both quickly and easily. The rusted hinges groaned their protest as he swung the door open, but Ling-Ling had assured them that the night guard posted outside the building door was prone to cat-napping, and she had added a little something to his flask to encourage a sound sleep.

Zuko's cell door opened more quietly, and Sokka was soon fumbling with the smaller key to open the lock on his right wrist.

"Ham-fisted idiot. Can't you hurry up?" Zuko hissed his impatience.

"Do you want to do it yourself? Just shut up and let me fin– there, I've got it!" He turned to Zuko's other wrist.

"Give me the key. You go figure out that stupid trick door," Zuko ordered, hand outstretched. "It might take a while in the dark."

Sokka complied. Zuko's habit of command was annoying, but when he was right he was right.

He was deep in concentration, feeling for the mechanism that would cause the panel to slide away, when there was a sharp clang and crash behind him. He turned in surprise.

The door to his cell was now lying on the stone floor. Zuko reached down to pick it up and, holding the lock in place, turned the key again so that the door was held upright by lock alone.

He turned to meet Sokka's gaze.

"What? I didn't think you'd want all your hard work to go to waste," he said, smirking.

Sokka felt unbridled admiration well up inside him. "That was _just_ amazing! I didn't think those hinges were ready to go yet." That he also hadn't thought Zuko was aware of what he had been doing late at night went unsaid.

"For _you_, they probably wouldn't have."

"Hah! I'll give you that one, anyway," Sokka conceded.

"But, hey, Zuko, why bother? Are you trying to get Ling-Ling off the hook?"

"I - I don't know. I just thought …" He had no desire to admit that it was a combination of arrogance and, ah, some form of affection or gratitude to both Sokka and Ling-Ling, that had motivated him. "Why?"

"Ah, never mind. Throws a little more smoke on our trail. And I think we do owe Ling-Ling a little something, don't you?"

"I owe her nothing," Zuko groused. "What will confuse them is how I got out."

Sokka laughed, "Let them imagine intervention from the spirit world. Unless you think you can do the same thing to your own cell door and the wall shackles." He looked at Zuko in inquiry.

Zuko considered the question, shrugged, and sent a flying kick to the other cell door's hinges. It took several more tries, and the shackles were even more difficult to manage. He was winded when he turned the key again in the lock on the cell door.

In the meantime, Sokka had crept to the corridor door to check on the guard. Happily, he was snoring peacefully and was oblivious to the din within.

By now Sokka had the hidden door open, although crawl-way would have been a better name. The two boys scooted through and Sokka resealed it shut behind them.

They looked at each other, bathed in the open moonlight. The easy part was over.

* * *

Burly shapes moved on the wall above them. Probably twice more than they had originally hoped. But not more than they were expecting. They watched and counted, measuring the gaps between watches. Waited still longer to be sure.

They knew that Zuko's hard soles would leave greater marks on the walls than Sokka's soft leathers. So Zuko stood bare-foot while Sokka stole up the wall with his boots, deliberately marking stone and dislodging gravel, as silently as he could. As he straddled the top, he was tempted to go on over, down and out. What, after all, did he owe to a Fire Nation prince?

His own feet hit the ground beside Zuko mere seconds after the older boys boots tattooed his head and shoulders, and before he could pull them on again.

The porter's gate was a few hundred steps away, and it opened outward after all. Though Ling-Ling had taken care to oil its hinges, she had left the overgrowth of years trailing on its railings, and they did their best to avoid disturbing it.

The armory was a dark, windowless mass of a building to the far side of the front gate in the outer wall. Thanks to Ling-Ling's description, they found it easily.

The time had come for decisions.

* * *

"Baby, come home to papa," Sokka murmured as he picked up the boomerang from the low table in front of the arms lockers.

"You're absurd." Zuko grunted.

"And when I see you abandon something your father gave you–" Sokka deliberately trailed off as he claimed his bone knife and club from the table. While he was at it, he grabbed a machete from a rack and a long, crescent-headed pike. He then headed for the back room, where Ling-Ling had indicated explosives were stored.

Zuko took care with his choices, selecting a well-balanced pair of broadswords and their double-sheath, a long knife and its scabbard, and a discrete selection of impact grenades that could be tucked into his belt. He saw no sign of the Earth Kingdom dagger he had carried for years, but then, he didn't really expect to. And he thought maybe _he_ was past caring for particular things. Enough already.

With annoyance he followed Sokka into the back room.

"What do _you_ know of explosives?" He asked in derision.

"Enough. I know _I_ can't light them just by being pissed."

Although he was starting to feel that maybe he could, and certainly wished so. Zuko _knew_ his plan. He could have been gone already, scaling the lightly-guarded outer wall by now, free to disappear in the surrounding woods. Sokka _didn't_ need him here throwing doubt on the possibility of success.

"Just go, will you?" He hissed. "You can be out of here, doing whatever it is you think you need to do now!" He already knew that hunting Aang was no longer a priority on Zuko's list. While he had never actually asked the question, he also knew he could never have aided Zuko had he any doubts.

"I _asked_ you. What do you _know_ of explosives?" Zuko repeated. His decision to leave had already been made. It was the only sane thing to do. Sokka was a fool to potentially give his life for a bunch of unknown criminals.

Of course, for Sokka, they were prisoners of war, prisoners of his enemy, the Fire Nation.

So, despite his fear for his sister, despite his horror at the Avatar's potential plight, he would risk all to give a rag-tag bunch of miscreant soldiers – not even Water Tribe soldiers, but of another nation – along with the odd thief or even murderer or three, another chance at fighting.

Sokka was, without question, the consummate fool in Zuko's eyes.

So. If Sokka was the Earth Kingdom's fool, what did that make _him_? The question was inescapable. The answer humiliating. So why did he do it?

Why indeed?

For Zuko followed on the mad footsteps of the Water-Tribesman as he laid charge after charge, powder trail curved seductively out of wind's way, short enough to encourage hope but too long to ensure certainty, all along the three blocks of cells that made up this poor prison.

Sokka was a ghost under the moon, uncannily silent. The guards had no chance of even being aware of him, let alone spotting him or sounding the alarm. Having played this role himself before, Zuko recognized a master in Sokka. Yet another count against the Water-Tribesman in his eyes. Oh yes, Zuko recognized something in Sokka's stealth that he had claimed long ago for his own. Were there yet more parallels to draw between the two?

"Well, are you in or not" Sokka had asked at that first, long trail of black powder. He had pulled out the flint and stone he'd garnered from the armory. "If not, I'd appreciate it if you'd get the hell out of the way. I told you. I don't need you here and I don't expect you to help."

"And what happens when you fuck up?" Zuko asked.

"I suppose it's possible…I die," Inevitably, a comical image arose in Sokka's mind of a musical performer, met in what now felt like another lifetime, dramatically intoning death as the likely end of a particular effort. "I don't care for that '_when_' you used instead of '_if_'."

"I seem to recall your admitting your original plans usually fail."

"Well, this isn't my original plan, is it? This is probably plan number forty-seven, so it should be just fine, thank you very much," They were wasting time, and both of them knew it.

"Right. You're gonna die and all this effort will be wasted. Great," Zuko spat back.

"Not your problem. Remember, this prison is a'representation of your father's authority'," Sokka could not even imagine why he repeated that thought since _nothing_ could be more calculated to drive Zuko away. Well, wasn't that what he wanted?

"Crap," Zuko spat. "So I'm supposed to walk away and let them do a job I've been saving for myself? I don't think so. So what do you need me to do to make this damn prison break work?"

* * *

_A/N: Yep. Cliff-hanger. Just so you know, one more chapter to go and then an epilogue. Thank you all for your continued interest in this encounter, and thank you also for your reviews!_


	19. Chapter 19

_A/N: Some of you may think the escape is confused. It is, deliberately so. They do more than they have to because they have no idea if things are going to work out as planned – they are trying to cover all the bases. And neither of them knew until the last minute that Zuko would help in the general bust-out. That he does decide to help is, in fact, a good thing._

_Thank you again, all of you who have reviewed. Zuko and Sokka would thank you, if they both weren't so irritated at all I've put them through. Ling-Ling thanks you._

Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…

* * *

**Chapter 19**

The first charge did not explode until they were back at the porter's gate. The next followed in quick succession. Zuko marveled at Sokka's precision. It was almost as if he had studied at the hand of a master of Fire Nation explosives. But surely, that wasn't possible. Where and when could Sokka have gained such expertise?

Sokka had placed the charges such that cell walls should _crumble_, not explode laterally – he hoped that King Bumi of the Earth Kingdom had not wasted what little time he had spent with the young Tribesman all those months ago regarding the basics of structural engineering. Again he thanked Aang's impatience to learn fire-bending for giving him time with that flake-brained explosives expert. Why, he wondered, did people with the most interesting skills have to be crackpots, anyway?

Earthen walls don't burn, but wooden ceiling beams do, and so the moon's soft glow was challenged by lurid flames sheeting across the sky.

The Fire Nation's prison officials had always assumed the Earth Kingdom would strike back against them. It had never occurred to them that a Water Tribesman would use the weaknesses of the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation's own weapons to bring their prison down.

And so the timeless heat that Sokka had felt under an alien sky was brought to serve the purpose of the Water Tribes. It was an irony only he could appreciate.

He was wrong about one thing though.

They were too far away from the various blasts to truly feel their heat.

Because they were already in the outer ring, they did not experience the explosion of desperate humanity seeking their one chance for freedom.

Zuko had argued for arming multiple charges against the main inner gate, and neither had trusted to the possibility of that gate falling without obstacle. Attacking this gate from the outside was their next objective.

All attention from the guards on the wall was on the inner compound. Sokka's silent boomerang and Zuko's impact grenades eliminated nearly a dozen defenders on the wall with none the wiser.

There was still an advantage in the late hour, for though roused by the deafening impact of the explosions, the troops sleeping in the barracks were groggy and disoriented. It would take them some minutes to gather their faculties and weapons and emerge to confront the emergency.

They would also be slowed by the pike staffs Sokka and Zuko had wedged in the door handles before returning to the cell blocks with the explosives.

So the two boys were virtually unopposed when they stood before the large inner gate again. While Zuko set the charges at its base, Sokka again climbed the wall to wedge small casks of blasting jelly between the edges of wall and gate. He had originally counted on the heat of the lower blasts to ignite the upper, but with Zuko's fire-bending this element of luck was at least mitigated.

Ah, and Zuko performed to spec, taking pleasure in a release of passionate fire without restraint. The charges in turn blasted the gate to oblivion. Within short minutes of the gate's falling, a small wave of humanity poured through from the main prison blocks, Earth Kingdom warriors with a serious grudge against the Fire Nation.

So the Fire Nation prisoners swarmed over the environs of the outer prison campus. Some warders fell beneath the bare-handed fury of people long denied hope. A body of troops broke free of the barracks just as another group of inmates found the armory. The night, already rent by the thunder of Sokka's explosives, now echoed with oaths and screams as men fell upon each other in an age-old dance of hatred and destruction.

But Sokka and Zuko were already through the outer gate.

* * *

Although they had always planned to scale the outer wall, Sokka knew the outer gate must also be breached or the uprising would be doomed to failure. As it happened, this gate was no challenge at all. The four guards assigned to watch it were drawn away by the first explosions from the inner walls, and it was a simple matter to lift the bar and throw it open. For good measure, Zuko charred the upright posts supporting the bar's fittings; there would be no sealing the gate again until those posts were replaced.

Zuko made yet another mental note about the foolishness of assuming layers of defense were adequate when each individual layer was poorly conceived, riddled with corruption, or laughably executed.

Sokka asked himself how it was possible a regime with such flawed organization could have come so close to taking over the world. Then he reminded himself that the war had been going on for over a hundred years. And that this was just a single facility, not necessarily representative of the Fire Nation any more than its prince was.

"Not that I don't appreciate the thought, but don't you think that last shot at the gate was a bit showy?" Sokka asked as they trotted through the woods on a course that at least initially paralleled that of the road.

"You want showy? I'll give you showy if you don't shut up and just run!" Zuko was exhilarated. They were free! And his control had been perfect, his form flawless. He, whose head and body were marked with countless bruises, who had felt in the looseness of his clothing and bowels the dropped weight, lost muscle tone and stamina, whose soul had ached with the weakness of the lost and abandoned, had persevered and triumphed almost over death itself!

"Save it. The moon will be setting soon, and we might want some light before sunrise to prevent us from falling off a cliff. So, how much do _you_ remember about the lay of the land when you were brought in?" Sokka too felt giddy. They had succeeded beyond his hopes, if the shouts they had heard behind them were any indication.

It would have been madness to stay any longer. Sokka knew he could not hope to alter the chaos he had set in motion behind him, for good or ill. If he believed in fate or destiny he would have thought he had been meant to strike the spark to the tinderbox of that late spring's prison. He would also have had to acknowledge that without the fire prince such a blaze may not have been possible.

But Sokka did not believe in fate or destiny.

* * *

Zuko groaned. "We've been over this, again and again. Do you think I have forgotten, or that you need reminding _yourself_?"

They holed up eventually along a stream course, deep in a rocky copse of eucalyptus trees, ground littered with the signature peeled bark and detritus, air heavy with its acidic-bitter scent. Zuko felt like he was sleeping in a den redolent of cat piss.

Sokka relaxed in the confidence that they had disturbed nothing upon their arrival, that birdsong and the odd crashing sound of legs confronting deep, dry and loose plant debris would give them ample warning of approaching sentries.

Both boys slept deeply.

It was a sleep composed of relief and release.

* * *

From the moment of the first explosion Ling-Ling had not slept at all. She had cursed herself, and felt her soul lifted on the wings of her imagination as she pictured her two heroes carving a swath through the soldiers of her father's guard.

She knew she was damned, but the exquisite roils and twists her lower belly experienced as she imagined the night's adventures quelled the cold reasoning of her mind. Honor demanded that that she allow her mind to present its condemnations. Experience admitted that she would dismiss her mind's prosecution in the defense's favor, yet again swayed by the romance of the successful rebel.

The stakes this time had been greater than ever. Even she had doubted their success. She had doubted they would take her up on the hints of possibility, that self-interest would overcome all.

The night's events had left even her uncertain. The Earth Kingdom had, possibly, chosen that night to attack.

The Water Tribe boy had apparently, quite mysteriously, managed to break open his cell – and the fire-bender's – without benefit of key.

The inner gate showed signs, quite obviously, of having been blown from outside.

The outer gate's damage was ambiguous.

The death toll, for the Fire Nation particularly, was punishingly high.

Virtually none of the escapees were captured after the initial prison break. The warden was hard-pressed to find sufficient justification to explain the reasons behind yet another failure. Particularly such an important failure. The failure to eliminate the threat of revolt from a banished son compounded by the loss of the Avatar's trusted companion. Ill news, indeed. It would take the most sophisticated of minds to puzzle a way out of this difficulty.

But the warden considered himself lucky. He was fully aware of his own limitations. But he was blessed in the extraordinary cunning of his only child. The warden relied heavily on his ugly daughter to come through, yet again, and make up for his own failures.

* * *

No one knew of her early morning foray into the ruins of the compound, of the discovery of three keys at the base of the abandoned porter's gate; the state cell key, the key to its wall shackles, and the key to the gate itself.

No one knew how she hugged to herself the knowledge of those fruitless tracks across the wall, the bent and twisted cell doors.

And no one knew, least of all Sokka and Zuko, how she wove her memories of these spirit-touched heroes into her dreams for the next, poor desperate soul, to tap into.

* * *

_A/N: Thus ends a collection of prison conversations. However, there is an epilogue yet to come. After all, didn't they promise to kill each other once they had the chance?_


	20. Epilogue

_A/N: I've reposted the epilogue in the interests of updating my comments. Mostly because this story is still racking up hits, despite its age (hit count for epilogue over 4,000!). It seems only fair to somehow acknowledge that. I've put my comments at the end so as not to distract those readers plowing through, as it were, to reach the terminus. Feel free to ignore my ending comments (not like I have any control over you anyways )_

Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…

* * *

**Epilogue**

Sokka was awakened by a none-too-gentle kick on his backside.

"You have _no_ idea how long I've wanted to do that," Zuko said mildly, backing off from the groggy Water-Tribe boy.

"What the _hell_ do you think you're doing!" Sokka growled, sitting up and rubbing the offended body part. He wondered if, perhaps, he should draw a weapon.

"Man, you _snore_! Like nothing on earth! I think I could have slept another couple hours if you hadn't started up again. You _always_ snore."

"I sing… I snore… I _talk_ too much… _All_ of which you have had plenty of time to _get used to_. Did it ever occur to you that the problem is not me but _you,_ yourself?" All Sokka wanted was to return to his interrupted slumbers. Why didn't _anyone_ understand that a growing boy needed his sleep? "If you assume my lack of complaints where _you_ are concerned reflects in any way my satisfaction with you as an immediate neighbor you are _dead_ wrong." Sleepily he reflected on how Zuko's good luck was actually merely a reflection of his ability to intimidate his predecessors or, more likely, given his position, any need to do so…

"Enough already. It's _late._ We need to get moving," Zuko had been up for a while, his exhaustion and relief finally overwhelmed by his internal clock.

"_We_? What is this '_we'_ business, your highness? And when did _you _decide that you can order me around?" Sokka had never been at his best first thing after waking, and his companion's peremptory attitude did not help matters.

Zuko glared. "If you think I'm going to let _you_ bumble around an occupied area when you could betray me at any time then you really _are_ crazy."

"Hello. Been walking around your damned 'occupied areas' for _months _now. I think I can manage, thank you very much," Sokka rolled his eyes.

"Right. Your 'managing' landed you in prison with a death sentence, remember?"

"My 'managing' got us both out, _remember_?"

They glared at one another. Sokka's stomach interrupted the stare-down with an amazingly loud gurgle. Zuko's single eyebrow elevated as Sokka blushed.

"So. Maybe breakfast _is_ in order."

Zuko smirked. "I hope you're not planning on Ling-Ling finding us out here?"

* * *

The stream yielded fingerling trout, tedious to catch but easy to swallow with benefit of Zuko's quick searing after Sokka removed heads and guts. After a month's prison fare, the tender flesh was a paradise for both boys. By common consent they returned to the stream after a first round to satiate their appetites further and fill the rucksack Sokka had grabbed from the armory to carry explosives.

Neither pursued the question Sokka had raised as to their continued collaboration.

Their course followed the stream under the assumption that it would, eventually, bring them to the sea. They knew that the prison wasn't far inland. Roads were far from safe and coastal ports offered the best opportunities for true escape from pursuit. That is, once you got to them.

At a still pool Sokka paused to muck around the edges, pulling up handfuls of green, weedy-looking mess. After rinsing, Zuko recognized it as edible, although bitter and usually forming part of a side dish rather than the main meal. He began to appreciate anew his companion's odd talents and experience.

* * *

At first their combined inclination was to run the other way. After two days' rough and ready travel, generally under the cover of darkness, the last thing either of them sought was confrontation.

And the noise they heard was clearly of confrontation.

But the sea was also in the air.

And the sea drew Sokka like a lover. Even as it repelled Zuko, whose mind had to overcome his experience; years associated with loss, the alien, and a sense of failure.

But Zuko prided himself on his intelligence. It was the reason – he told himself, the _only_ reason – he respected Sokka.

They were cautious. Well upland, with the woodland cover still thick around them, it was hard to discern exactly what they saw. But for Sokka, it was clear enough.

A Water Tribe force, in strong numbers – he thought he could make out the corsairs, so distinctive to Southern Water-tribe construction, moored on the beach. His heart leapt, even though his mind beat it into submission.

Unlike at the prison, there was no shortage of fire-benders in the opposition. Even in late afternoon, perhaps especially then, their frequent flares lit up the battlefield, clouding it with their smoke. It was impossible to tell who had the advantage.

Sokka wanted to run down, throw his lot with his fellow tribesmen, and forget anything and everything that had happened since his father had left with the village fleet. He was, after all, now a proven, competent warrior, and wanted nothing more than to add his efforts to that of his clan.

But Zuko forcibly restrained him, with a sharp left-hand cut to the throat that left Sokka momentarily breathless. Just long enough to allow Zuko to subdue him from yet another unexpected quarter; a hard blow to the side of his head reinforcing the message.

Sokka was appalled. He thought he had known better.

"Don't mistake me, Sokka. _This_ time we wait," Zuko swore, a part of him hating himself.

"Are you crazy? Stay if you like, but I'm going down there," He shoved hard against Zuko.

For one brief second it occurred to both of them that they might mirror the struggle on the slope below after all.

* * *

Then, cold steel pierced Zuko's shoulder, and at first they just looked at it, surprise overwhelming all other thought.

The shaft that pinioned him to the tree was no more than half the length of a normal spear, but had pierced his shoulder and embedded itself deeply within the tree behind him. He found himself remembering Sokka's discourse on the potency of a certain Water Tribe weapon. Pain stole strength from his legs and the hand that grasped the spear trembled.

Sokka nearly wept.

He swore potent curses against Zuko for exposing them both to fire from the combatants.

Zuko found breath to laugh. But that hurt, too.

Gritting his teeth, Sokka put one hand on Zuko's shoulder, his thumb encircling the spear. Wrapping his other arm around the prince, he pulled him gently forward, away from the tree, sliding the shaft of the spear through the wound.

Zuko gasped, his knees buckling further.

Still supporting the other boy with one arm, Sokka drew the machete he had taken from the prison armory. With all his strength he severed the spear shaft behind Zuko's shoulder.

No longer supported by the tree, Zuko's dead weight now fully fell on Sokka. Dropping the machete, he lowered the prince to the ground, then pulled the haft back through the wound, dropping it in turn to brace his hand against the splay of blood from the wound's bared core. He drew on memories of the siege of the North against his rebellious stomach.

Throughout, Sokka maintained an endless diatribe against Zuko's ancestors for starting the damned war, destroying the great cities of the South Pole, eliminating the Air Nomads and turning people against each other who should have been friends.

Zuko would have liked to protest, but he needed his breath for concentrating away the pain.

Sokka padded and wrapped the fire-bender's wounds with strips torn from his tunic. He could spare it.

Summer was nearly upon them.

* * *

"Dad!"

Zuko thought he was dreaming. But his half-dazed delirium did not prevent him from being full witness to the Water-Tribe boy's reunion with his father.

What kind of just spirit subjected a witness, himself bereft of hope regarding parental regard, to such a sight? There would be no such reunion for Zuko.

Sokka had thrown himself into the arms of the tall, dark-haired warrior who picked his way across the field at the battle's end. The older man looked taken aback. The lanky young man before him was almost unrecognizable as his son.

Almost.

And Sokka was crushed against him.

* * *

"So that was a rescue party after all?" Zuko asked, some time later.

"Yeah. Imagine that. They _might_ even have made it on time." Sokka was seated beside Zuko on the beach.

"For you, maybe."

Sokka shrugged. He was still astonished at the size of the force that had been sent to rescue him. His father had explained that it had taken little in the way of persuasion to divert his fleet to this part of the Earth Kingdom when word had reached him of Sokka's whereabouts. _Any_ Fire Nation target was worth taking out, and one with personal ties was _particularly _enticing to the Water Tribe.

"Now what?" Zuko asked.

"Don't you already know?" Sokka responded.

"I thought I did. I thought you would be off to find your sister and the Avatar. But that fleet isn't going that way, is it?"

Out of deference to Sokka's assurances that the wounded fire-bender was actually a Fire Nation fugitive, the Water Tribe warriors had let him be. They had even replaced Sokka's makeshift bandaging job with attention from their own medic. A good thing, since Sokka's tunic had been none too clean. But they _hadn't_ trusted him enough to talk to him, nor was Sokka allowed to give him real information.

"No. It isn't."

"Will you be going with your father then?" Zuko could see the ache in the other boy's eyes.

Instead of responding, Sokka asked a question of his own, "What are _you_ going to do?"

"Try to find my uncle. If he's still alive," Zuko said dully. "And maybe find a way to kill my sister."

Sokka shook his head. "The Fire Nation is crazy."

"No, Sokka, just some of us. Really," Zuko reached up to touch the bandage on his shoulder. "You never answered my question."

"I have to go where I'm most needed. So yeah, I'm gonna go find Aang and Katara," and Sokka stood up. "We're both gonna need supplies to get us started. I'll see what I can get from Dad."

He walked away without looking back. Zuko smiled. Perhaps their ways might lead together for a while longer. Perhaps.

FIN

* * *

_This is STILL the end. It could, with stretching of the imagination, almost fit in canon._

_Which is, for most readers, probably its saving virtue. Myself, I got a big kick out of fleshing out Sokka's character into something a bit more relevant than a mere comedic sidekick. But then, I always did see Sokka and Zuko as developmental peers, if not peers in the traditional story-line that drew clear lines between Aang and Zuko. Let's face it, Aang is interesting enough on his own as to make Zuko a mere commentary. But when you juxtapose the non-bending peasant with the fire-bender prince, there is amazing room for contrast and commentary. At least, it always struck me as psychologically rich minings to reflect on not only each other but on Aang himself._

_I did start a sequel not long after finishing this story. Obviously, the story line diverged drastically from the original, following my own character interests rather than canon plot._

_Yep. "Passages" is all about Sokka trying to rejoin Aang and his sister as Zuko tries to figure out what he should do next and why. On the whole? All good fun all around. [Or so I say…_

_As of 2012, years after the original story ended and a new timeline appeared, this story has had over 105,000 hits. It appears to be a minimum of 4k hits per chapter. I thank you, and hope you have enjoyed yourselves with this exploration of dialogue between two of my favorites from the canon, forced into a bizarre recognition of each other's humanity, and the lengths to which it would bring them. Because I read every review it has not passed my notice that most were from repeat readers of each chapters. I swear – y'all are the best! Given my own tendencies, I also appreciate those who waited to comment till the end; I know your comments reflected an overall opinion on the whole that was greatly appreciated, as I hope my diligent responses have indicated._

_As for the rest of you who read without commenting; that's okay too. It really was rather fun to write and such a response – getting this far – is commentary in itself. (Frankly, the fact that in 2012 people are still finding their way to this story is astonishing to me, and very gratifying)._

_For those of you who weren't quite satisfied with this story's exposition of the character of Ling-Ling (damn it - she confounded me for an extraordinarily long time!), don't feel alone or abandoned. She did spawn another story by another author – beautifully written, at least, I think so. If you want more, go to my profile page, where you will find the link (for some reason, I can't do it here!)._

_And yes, I succumbed and have brought her back in "Crossing The Line" a story I assume will be wholly limited to those interested in Sokka and my odd OC. I hope to finish it… someday._

_Thanks again to all of you!_


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